Posts tagged as “Column of the Day”

The British government is coming under escalating pressure to suspend arms sales to Israel after the strike on a convoy in Gaza that killed seven aid workers, including three Britons.

More than 600 lawyers and retired judges sent a letter to the government, arguing that the sales violated international law.

● Read in The New York Times

● Read here on The Red Line

A plurality of American voters think Israel has gone too far in responding to the October attacks by Hamas, and a growing share believes the U.S. isn’t doing enough to help the Palestinian people, a new Wall Street Journal poll finds.

● Read in The Wall Street Journal

Omitted from Gov. Lamont’s 35-minute State of the State budget address Feb. 7 was a two-word phrase that hangs over every important issue and initiative that will arise in the critical short session of the General Assembly this year.

“Fiscal guardrails,’’ may not mean much to the public outside of Hartford, but it casts a long shadow over the business in the Capitol over the next three months. If on May 9 we can look back and see that our elected leaders preserved our budgetary restraints and chose to live within our means, then this session will have been a success.

Republicans have doubled down in support of the fiscal guardrails they have long supported and that were finally adopted in 2017 into state law in overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion. We have proposed codifying the state’s existing budgetary constraints — spending and borrowing caps, and use of excess revenue restrictions, known as the volatility cap — into our State Constitution.

● Read in Hartford Courant

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