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.”

In “The Wasteland”, T. S. Eliot writes: April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land… I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. April 24 fell a month and a few days after Governor Ned Lamont, perhaps in consultation with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, announced on March 20 that many businesses in Connecticut would be shuttered owing to the onset of Coronavirus. To people whose stricken relatives abide in Connecticut nursing homes, that month must seem like an eternity.

The Middle East, we are told, is complex. That is true, but there is little point in making the complex more complex. We in the West should remember that partisanship and corruption grow in the crevices of complexity. If there were little confusion, we would have no need of experts to smooth a path for us through the complexities. The simplest explanation for an occurrence is usually the best. We should apply Occam’s Razor, which holds that the more assumptions you must make, the more unlikely your explanation, to all complex conundrums.

The sole political purpose of the Port Authority is to deprive local authorities in Connecticut of their rightful authority over their own ports. The power grab may be plainly seen in the scandal unfolding in New London, covered by the watchful New London Day. Perhaps the most efficient way of depriving The Day of its reportorial authority would be to set up a “journalism authority” to superintend stories and editorials in the paper. Of course, no self-respecting reporter or commentator would agree to such an overarching authority, and any state government that proposed one would be marched in tar and feathers to, say, Venezuela, where newspapers are written under the watchful eyes of Nicolás Maduro, a once and, one hopes, future bus driver. The Port Authority, just to begin with, is a quasi-public governmental organ, somewhat like a centaur, half man, half beast – neither one nor the other. It is a transcendent political organ, the political errors of which cannot be cor...

Democrats put off a vote on tolling during the recently concluded legislative session because, plain and simple, they did not have the votes to pass a tolling bill. But hope springs eternal. House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz thought he may have had the votes to pass the measure in the House, but passage was still an iffy proposition. Mark Pazniokas writes in the Hartford Business Journal , “Aresimowicz’s comments reflect a belief among lawmakers that the Lamont administration botched the rollout of tolls in February, giving Republicans, the trucking industry and others an opportunity to frame tolls as just another demand on residents.”

Never letting a crisis go to waste, Democrats who favor national restrictions on guns have turned the assault in San Bernardino in the direction of gun control laws they favor. If U.S. Senator Chris Murphy is not leading the pack, he is barking loudly with the other hounds. A day after the terrorist attack in California, Mr. Murphy tweeted to the world, “ Your ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage. Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing - again.” The Murphy tweet produced others chastising the Senator for devaluing prayer. But Mr. Murphy’s tweet was not so much an assault on the efficacy of prayer as it was a case of purposeful campaign posturing; tweeting brings out the worst in many of us. If people are unwilling to do something to stop the carnage, Mr. Murphy seemed to be saying, “their ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness.” Mr. Murphy did not say in his initial tweet who should be forgiven or why (Baathist tyrants in Syria? Isla...

It was bound to happen sooner or later. In Hartford, Connecticut, a one party town for decades, political favoritism has raised its ugly head – not for the first or last time. Mayor of Hartford Pedro Segarra and Hartford school officials, we learn from a stinging editorial in a Hartford newspaper , “are dead right in asking city auditors to clear the air on whether city Treasurer Adam Cloud had a conflict of interest in allegedly moving a city insurance policy from one broker to another one, Hybrid Insurance Group.” The connections between Hartford’s Treasurer, Mr. Cloud, and the insurance group that was awarded a substantial account are, the paper finds, unsavory: “Hybrid is a tenant in a downtown Hartford building owned by Mr. Cloud and family members. Also, treasurer Cloud's brother, Christopher Cloud, is a lobbyist for Hybrid.” Hartford’s “sharp-eyed chief financial officer,” Paula Altieri, discovered that the insurance policy had been transferred from one bro...

Paul Choiniere, the editorial page editor of The Day in New London, seemed mildly disappointed by the news that U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal had crossed the Rubicon and become an aggressive progressive. The increasing willingness of some progressives to challenge presidential leadership, Mr. Choiniere believes, will make the prospect of compromise in the congress yet more remote. Could it be true? Mr. Blumenthal had just met with the editorial board of the paper. Given the substance of the interview, Mr. Choiniere noted in a recent editorial , the readers of The Day could reasonably “count Sen. Richard Blumenthal among a growing number of liberal lawmakers who believe that the old Bill Clinton formula, which called upon Democrats to move toward the center on economic and fiscal policy, no longer applies. Income disparities have become so great, the plight of many low-income and young people so severe, it is time to ‘get back to a good, progressive, populist message,’ Sen. ...

Govern Dannel Malloy’s State of the State message gave little indication of his plans for the future. From a budgetary or strategic planning point of view, there wasn’t much “there” there, but the speech evidentially was framed for a national audience. Everyone who has made a speech on any topic will tell you that the substance of a speech is determined in large part by the nature of your audience. One report indicated that the address was, compared with other state of the state addresses, a bit out of the box; other governors have used the occasion to map out a plan of governance for the new legislative session, and Mr. Malloy didn’t.  On the other hand, he felt compelled to say something about Sandy Hook, a national and even international story.   On Sandy Hook, he should be telling the legislature not to be precipitous; wait for the investigation to be completed.   He may be doing that, but one never knows what goes on behind closed doors.

Delores Hart, now a cloistered nun at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, moved from Hollywood to the Abbey in 1963. Although she played in movies with famous Hollywood stars of her day -- perhaps most notably, Elvis Presley -- she described her time in Hollywood in the short clip below as being "wounded with life." My wife Andrée spent some time at the Abbey around the time when I first met her, and we have visited it several times since. It is not only a refuge from a wounded and wounding world but a reservoir of religious and spiritual energy. This, no doubt, was part of the lure that drew Mother Delores away from the hurly burly of Hollywood towards the very heart of the Christian faith. It has made her wise, as is evident from the interview above. The story here in The Day of New London   is well worth reading. “Bethlehem (AP) — In the little town of Bethlehem, a cloistered nun whose luminous blue eyes entranced Elvis Presley in his firs...

Ted Mann has written for the Day of New London a multipart opus on the Malloy administration that purports to be an inside look at the “malloyalists,” Mann’s term for the Brights surrounding Connecticut’s first Democratic governor in 20 years. The difficulty with all such accounts is that embedded journalists tend to be stage managed by the principal actors in the drama. And the malloyalists are energetic stage managers. George Bernard Shaw was no admirer of autobiographies; they were all self-serving, carefully edited to show the hero of the piece in the best light. To the extent that a putatively objective piece of political drama approaches autobiography, it will be practically useless. A biography of Napoleon written by his butler might be useful, Shaw thought. But autobiographies – not so much. An account of the Napoleonic years written by Madam DeRemusat, Lady in Waiting to the Empress Josephine, Napoleon’s cast-off wife, is useful to historians precisely because the lady, s...

During his visit to New London, part of a multi-town tour to sell his budget to taxpayers, Governor Dannel Malloy got an earful from stressed citizens. An engineering manager who works in Montville, John Fearns, unburdened himself on state employee pensions. Mr. Fearns’ business had absorbed some hard knocks during the current lingering recession when “layoff and furlough days were expressed in months, not days." Riffing on the “fair share” that has become a staple of Mr. Malloy’s appearances at town meetings, Mr. Fearns, looking the governor in the eye, asked, “So I'm asking you to look me in the eye, when you ask to raise high taxes for a business model that is unsustainable, one that offers a job for life, paid pension, a Cadillac health plan for as long as you live, and I'm asking you to tell me how you can say that's fair for me.” According to a story in the Day of New London , “Malloy fired right back: ‘The guy who entered into a 20-year deal on benefits wa...

In a bone crunching editorial in The Day of New London on Sunday, President Pro Tem of the Senate Don Williams and Speaker of the House Chris Donovan are sent to the infirmary: “No one in the Democratic leadership, it appears, wants to face the reality of a dramatic decrease in tax revenues tied to a prolonged recession. By all reports, the Democratic caucus cannot agree how to proceed, likely leading to inaction on Tuesday. Support and faith in Senate President Donald E. Williams Jr., D-Brooklyn, has severely eroded. House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, D-Meriden, may have a stellar liberal record of supporting health care for the poor, children's programs and organized labor, but he seems ill-suited for a time that requires tough decisions that will harm some of those very constituencies.” The Democratic controlled legislature is, The Day asserts “Frozen with fear when confronting a monster largely of its own making, the Democratic leadership in the General Assembly is ready...

An story in The Day of New London examines the slippage in US Sen. Chris Dodd’s popularity, now hovering around 50%: “The percentage of voters who disapprove of how Dodd is handling his job has risen six points since March to 34 percent…” Doug Schwartz, the pollmeister at Quinnipiac University, attributes the dip to Dodd’s deal with Countrywide and resentment over Dodd’s failed presidential bid: “The perception was that he was not focusing on his job as senator representing Connecticut,” said Schwartz. Former Democratic state party chairman George Jepsen begs to differ. Jepsen said it wasn’t unusual for failed presidential candidates to suffer a home-state backlash and attributed Dodd’s slippage to, according to the Day, “the anti-incumbent mood from the sour economy." If Jepsen’s analysis is right –it isn’t – the Democrat Congressional delegation should be shaking in its boots. The last Republican congressman standing in New England is moderate Rep. Chris Shays; the rest are al...

The Day of New London discovers new ways of looking at billboards.