Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

State Representative Josh Elliot, a progressive Democrat from Hamden, views the state budget as “a moral document that can be used to create a more equitable and fair society,” the Hartford Courant tells us. The paper quotes Elliot on the point: “Are you taking an economic frame and saying ‘what can we do to grow GDP at all costs?’ … Or are you taking a moral and ethical frame and saying ‘what can we do to build up a just society?’ And I think those two questions are at loggerheads right now.” There is a welter of confusion here. The point Elliot appears to be making is that progressives like himself view the economy as having a moral dimension lost to free-marketers, i.e. redundantly rich capitalists concerned only – note the devil word “only” -- with growing the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It would not be possible in Elliot’s view for a free-marketer like, say, Fredrick Hayek, author of “The Road To Serfdom” -- a ruthless attack against the collectivist ethos that informs ...

One of Linda McMahon’s most insistent critics, Chris Powell of the Journal Inquirer, noted in a post-debate column that Mrs. McMahon’s view on abortion was … ahem … “more nuanced” than that of Chris Murphy. The views of President Barack Obama on abortion are, if possible, more extreme than those of Mr. Murphy. There are no circumstances in which the president would disallow an abortion. As an Illinois state senator, Mr. Obama had fulsomely supported legislation permitting abortion on demand, which would include the kind of sex selection abortion practiced in China and – this may surprise pro-abortion proponents – abortions condemned by the early church fathers in the late Roman Empire. The paterfamilias of a family in Rome at the time St. Augustine of Hippo was fulminating against the practice held life and death powers over his children, born and unborn. While infanticide was rare, in the Clintonian sense, during the reign of the Caesars, a father could not be punished under Roma...

The AFL-CIO union endorsements of U.S. Representative Chris Murphy, now running for U.S Senator Joe Lieberman’s seat in congress, caught no one by surprise. Unions have been riding Mr. Murphy during his three terms in the Congress, and there simply is no point changing horses in the middle of the stream. Incumbents such as Mr. Murphy enjoy what might be called the presumptive vote; and, of course, incumbents generally have under their command resources unavailable to those who seek to displace them. Never one to fear burning a candle at both ends, Mr. Murphy’s resources include large PAC donations from both business groups and unions, generally assumed to be ideological opposites. That Mr. Murphy is supported by both groups suggests a certain programmatic fogginess and political agility one associates with politicians who have spent a lifetime in the Beltway having their cake and eating it too.   Business PACs, routinely scourged by Mr. Murphy when he is talking to union...

Robert Thorson is a professor of geology at the University of Connecticut's Liberal Arts and Sciences and a member of The Hartford Courant's Place Board of Contributors. His columns appear frequently on the paper’s op-ed pages. The Liberal Arts at UConn are, as elsewhere in academia, very liberal. Mr. Thorson is certain he knows how the rest of us will know when gas prices are “high enough.” The attentive reader will notice that Mr. Thorson did not write “too high” but used the formulation “high enough.” That is because Mr. Thorson ardently believes that gas prices in Connecticut, now cresting above $4 and heading towards $5, are not as high as they should be. The price of gas will be high enough, Mr. Thorson advised in a column published on May 5, 2011 , when: “… drive-through lanes at fast-food restaurants and doughnut shops would not be lined with mostly oversized vehicles carrying mostly oversized people toward food energy. “…the carpool lanes on local interstate...