Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Trenee McGee The temptation is to treat state Rep. Trenee McGee’s protest as a “man bites dog” story. That may be a serious error in judgment. It is always possible she knows more about inner city life than most tourist politicians and media savants. McGee , a Black state representative in West Haven’s 116th District, “replaced Rep. Michael DiMassa, who stepped down after an FBI investigation led to charges of stealing more than $600,000 in federal COVID-19 relief money by billing the city of West Haven for pandemic-related consulting services that federal officials said he never performed,” according to a report in a Hartford paper. Her maiden speech on the floor of the state House of Representatives during an abortion debate in April surprised nearly everyone. McGee said she wanted to serve as a spokesperson for the urban Black community in Connecticut. Abortion, she said, has been “destructive to my community.” She wanted to “speak the fearless truth” about inequitable aborti...

Attorney General Tong Every so often in Connecticut, the bureaucratic iron curtain parts and we are treated to headlines such as these: UConn prof wins $736,000, gets job back after questioning school’s management and favoritism in ‘whistleblower’ suit and Connecticut Lottery to pay $450,000 in settlement of suit that arose after allegations to FBI . Such stories have a very short shelf life and generally do not result in creative solutions for persistent and recurring problems. No one is hauled before a congressional investigating committee, necessary reforms are easily shelved along with a momentary embarrassment, and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong  walks off the stage with a sardonic smile pasted on his face, muttering “no comment.” A payout follows, a smothering blanket is thrown over the whole sordid mess, life resumes its wayward course and, in the absence of a real solution to a long festering problem, the whole cycle repeats itself. The UConn professor was award...

Q: It’s so good to meet you ( chuckles ) in person, so to speak. Aristophanes:   Funny. Would you mind if I use that in the future? Q: I wasn’t aware there was a future for the dead. A: That is what I might call an example of the arrogance of the living. You are forgetting William Faulkner, who said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." He wrote most persuasively about the past by resurrecting the dead in his novels. We all do that, one way or another. You must remember that the only advantage those who are alive at present have over the dead is that they are alive and the dead are dead. That’s it. Q: I wonder if you can confirm a story about you, not that it has anything to do with the subject of our discussion, the role of comedy in culture. It is said that you died from a falling roof tile that struck you on the head. One of our commentators said your manner of death was ironically appropriate, for a comic writer. A: ( nonplussed, a vacant look ) Q: H...

Texas Welcomes Tesla (Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images) “Patriotism if you must, but please no parades” – George Bernard Shaw Governor Ned Lamont, a successful businessman to judge by his asset status, is attempting to lure profitable business from pro-life states. To this end he has placed a recruitment ad in several backwater states that have imposed restrictions on abortion. A Hartford newspaper covered the ad in a story – “ Abortion rights touted to bring jobs ,” and Lamont is quoted in the story – to this effect: Dear business owners, Now more than ever is the time to look at Connecticut as the future home of your business. We have the workforce, the high quality of life and the values that we know will make you, your families and your employees feel welcome. We are writing to any business owner that is disappointed in the stance of their current state [concerning abortion restrictions]. If you are looking to relocate to a state that supports the rights of women ...

Blumenthal Connecticut Democrat politicians, U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal among them, are making a valiant effort to move “abortion rights” from the back to the front burner before Connecticut voters go to the polls in November’s off year elections to register their distaste for high gas prices, a porous southern U.S. border, a foreign policy lapse in Afghanistan, a faltering plan to aid Ukraine with sufficient defensive war material before Russian President Vladimir Putin annexes the Donbas region of Ukraine, and a looming recession. Some economists, by no means friendly to former President Donald Trump, are whispering aloud that the United States already is in a recession. And left wing Democrats are signaling that President Joe Biden is now in disfavor. Neo-progressives say he is not progressive enough, moderate Democrats think he has jumped a vital center barricade, landing squarely in the extreme leftist camp of socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and ‘The Squad,” a group of A...

Connecticut taxpayer funded campaign finance reform has died the death of a thousand cuts. Hartford Courant reporter Edmund Mahony, who has been around the state’s campaign reform process for many years, has written its political obituary in a story titled “ Election reform concerns remain: Long dormant case casts light on taxpayer campaign funding .” The blunt weapon used to bludgeon campaign finance reform in the state was a “perfectly legal” walk-around amendment that subverted the campaign reform law’s intent and purpose – which was to level the campaign financing process between incumbent politicians of both parties and outspent challengers. The last rites on Connecticut’s campaign finance laws were read by Charles Urso, “who spent decades investigating political crime for the FBI and led the State Elections Enforcement Commission’s [State Senator Edward] Kennedy investigation until retiring in 2016.” While serving in the FBI, reporter Mahony notes, Urso “was a lead investigator i...

Perhaps someone in Connecticut’s General Assembly should propose a law forbidding legislators and state officials from misusing the expression “common sense” and its derivatives. “The nation’s highest court,” a Hartford paper reported in late June, “overturned a New York law that dates back to 1913 and says that applicants need to show ‘proper cause’ that they need a gun for self-defense in order to obtain a license that they could carry the concealed weapon in public. “But the court ruled 6-3 that the New York law ‘violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public.’” The ruling produced a spate of objections from Connecticut politicians in which the expression “common sense” and its derivatives were painfully iterated by so called “gun control advocates.” William Tong, Connecticut’s Attorney General advised that Connecticut gun restriction laws, different than those...