Posts published in “Guest”

Gov. Ned Lamont continues to baffle. He often portrays himself as a leader above grimy politics and then he goes and spoils his pose by acting like a lifelong hack. This month the contrasts were at their sharpest and most disappointing.

At the start of February, Lamont replaced Robert Rinker from the position the former union leader held on the State Contracting Standards Board, or SCSB. Rinker and others like him are essential to the efficient and honest operation of important parts of state government. They make sure state officials are abiding by the rules.

Rinker was a model member, which means he made Lamont and his administration unhappy by telling the truth. The SCSB has raised issues about contracts for the cost of the State Pier project in New London.

Jean Morningstar, a Democrat appointed to the board by former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, said she was “outraged and disgusted” by Lamont’s move, calling it “politically motivated” and “personal.”

● Read in Hartford Courant

The Supreme Court struck a symbolic blow to Harvard University this June by declaring its racial admissions preferences illegal. It remains to be seen what stratagems Harvard will use to try to continue engineering racial diversity. One thing is certain, however: the university will pay no price in reputation or in philanthropic support for the Court’s rebuke.

To understand just how confident Harvard can be in its irresistible appeal to donors, consider one of its recent windfalls. In April 2023, hedge-fund manager Kenneth Griffin bestowed $300 million on the university, close to the largest single donation in the institution’s history.

Griffin’s cumulative giving to the school now totals over $500 million, spread between the education, law, and business schools, as well as other entities. In exchange for this latest gift, Harvard renamed its graduate division the Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Business as usual, you may think; another billionaire plowing treasure into an institution whose values are, at best, in tension with American traditions and, at worst, antithetical to them. But Griffin is a conservative.

● Read in City Journal

● Read excerpt in The Wall Street Journal

● Read here on The Red Line

The Teamsters Local 671 of Bloomfield is teaming up with the Connecticut Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) to recruit individuals to infiltrate businesses with the explicit objective of unionizing the workplace.

● Read at Yankee Institute

● Read here on The Red Line

The other day Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the refusal by Republicans in Congress to raise the debt ceiling would cause a “constitutional crisis” that might cripple the economy and financial system as the government ran out of money and defaulted on some of its bonds.

Nonsense. Because it retains the power of money creation, the federal government can never run out of money. It can create money to infinity. The government prefers not to create money so frankly, since it might be inflationary, but the government has the power.

● Read in Journal Inquirer - 2nd of two-part column

● Read here on The Red Line

President Biden portrays House Republicans as hostage-takers for demanding that deficit savings accompany any debt limit increase. He maintains that “clean” debt limit bills reflect typical Washington practice.

The president's position is the one that actually represents the departure from Washington norms and precedents.

For decades, the debt limit served as a legitimate tool for both Republicans and Democrats to address budget deficits. Indeed, of the eight largest deficit-reduction laws since 1985, all eight were attached to debt limit bills.

● Read in Daily Beast

● Read here on The Red Line

If Connecticut had even average annual investment performance from its underwhelming pension funds, our tax burden would dramatically decrease.

Connecticut’s previous treasurers provided this state, consistently, with one of the single worst investment track records of all 50 states, as our Yale research team found through an original, comparative 50-state analysis of state pension fund investment performance.

● Read in CT Insider

● Read here on The Red Line