Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

In case anyone has not noticed, we are in the midst of a Nietzschean transvaluation of all values epoch.  Last week, the United States Supreme Court raised the roof on marriage to accommodate gays, striking down with one bold stroke state laws governing marriage that the justices and the editorial board of the New York Times thought primitive and unnecessary. Gov. Dannel Malloy, WFSB reported , “called the decision historic and had a LGBT pride flag flying at the Governor's Residence in Hartford on Friday. ‘This is a historic moment, and we should recognize and celebrate its significance. Equality, freedom, justice and liberty – all recognized by the Supreme Court in this ruling that moves our nation forward,’ Mr. Malloy said.” His administration, Mr. Malloy has said previously, is the gayest in state history and has been full of historic moments.

A few Days ago, Greece collapsed under a load of debt regularly passed forward by spendthrift and cowardly politicians to future bill-payers. Now at the mercy of international loan sharks, the final comeuppance will not be pretty. Among all the states in the United States, Connecticut most closely resembles Greece at the tipping point. Consider: The state is groaning under a load of pension debt, about $44 billion, that hangs by a slender thread over its head like a Damoclean sword. Fearful – but not too fearful – of hiking taxes to absorb repeated spending shocks, Connecticut’s progressive government has resorted to other tricks of the budget trade to discharge its debt.

A few weeks ago, Democrats and their sounding boards in the increasingly irrelevant media fired a shot across Republican Presidential candidate Mario Rubio’s “yacht,” hoping to sink his candidacy. It turned out the yacht was a fishing boat; but, no matter, Democrats had made a point. Republicans are rich – therefore insensitive to the vast yachtless middle class. Republican candidate for Governor Tom Foley suffered the same scrutiny -- with this difference: Foley really was rich, and his yacht did not resemble the creaky boats used by Mr. Rubio’s Cuban forbearers to escape the remorseless tyranny of the Castro brothers, both communists who long ago had declared war on yacht owners and political opponents and gays and others who opposed their brutal autocratic regime. Fidel Castro had a yacht. (See the picture above showing uber-rich Lowell Weicker canoodling with Fidel on his yacht.) Mr. Weicker, Maverick U.S. Senator and Governor of Connecticut, also had a yacht. The Castro ...

The romance between Fred Carstensen of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis (CCEA) at UConn and the administration of Governor Dannel Malloy suffered a setback when Mr. Carstensen discovered that new data supplied by the federal government indicates a slowdown in business activity. For reasons that are not clear, the dip in job growth in Connecticut surprised Mr. Carstensen, the Candide of economic analysts in the northeast.

The two most abhorrent but inescapable duties of politicians are: 1) selling themselves or their states to prospective investors, and 2) raising money for political campaigns. Connecticut politicians who do not like dunking for dollars hope to relieve themselves of the second chore through the public financing of campaigns. Whether or not the first is a disagreeable chore depends upon the individual politician and the condition of his product.

Progressives have for some time been in the habit of calling tax receipts “investments.” Governor Dannel Malloy, who has proposed a thirty year, one hundred billion investment in infrastructure repair, is Connecticut’s chief investment broker. The term is borrowed from Wall Street and glows with the promise of a handsome return on the investment. Naturally, the over-hyped return usually is slender; the bulk of investments in education, for instance, are absorbed in salary and benefit payments to teachers and administrators. When a government taxes its citizenry and invests the tax revenue in various projects, it is moving a bucket of money from the deep end of the pool and dumpling it into the shallow end of the pool. The drawing and dumping, it should be noted, does not raise the water level in the pool. The pool, in other words, is no richer in water after the getting and spending transactions have been completed. Government, despite what most people have been told, is not a wealt...

Toscanini said of Marian Anderson, “A voice like this comes but once in a hundred years.”  Her personal history is probably the most uplifting story of self-liberation in a hundred years. First she went to Europe to perfect her art  -- then she returned to conquer America. When she sang "My Country Tis Of Thee" from the Lincoln Memorial, breaking back of unthinking intolerance, she did so with the iron rod of beauty. And her life represents the triumph of a patient righteousness over intemperate hatred. So then, here she is, and if the reader will meet her patience with his own, he will begin to understand why the hand of God brushed her lips as she sang. Just listen to her sing Shubert's "Ave Maria"and "They Crucified My Lord." This is where the search for beauty leads -- to he heart of light and love.