Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The very title of the story in CTMirror was ominous: “ Howls as Malloy tries to shorten leash on watchdogs.” And in the lede paragraph, a dark joweled Richard Nixon is resurrected from his bed of infamy: “Governor Dannel Malloy is attempting the most dramatic makeover of the state's watchdog agencies since their creation as post-Watergate reforms in the 1970s.” Watergate redivivus !

In the past 150 years (at least since Marx), the socialists have been very effectively destroying human freedom under humane and compassionate slogans, such as caring for man, ensuring social equality, and fostering social welfare. The environmentalists are doing the same under equally noble-minded slogans, expressing concern about nature more than about people (recall their radical motto “Earth First!”). In both cases, the slogans have been (and still are) just a smokescreen. In both cases, the movements have been (and are) completely about power . . . -- Vaclav Klaus, 2007 “Take no chances.” “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” “Better safe than sorry.” “Look before you leap.” These aphorisms are the common currency of the call for the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle holds that precautionary action should be taken to avoid irreparable harm to the environment and to human health. Even though scientific proof is lacking that harm has been caused o...

April 25 was World Malaria Day, reminding us of that wonderful magical chemical DDT, which conquers diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, fleas, and lice, from malaria to typhus, yellow fever, dengue, sleeping sickness, plague, encephalitis, and West Nile Virus. DDT kills a child every 12 seconds and 250 million adults every year; it’s genocide, said Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine’s Art Robinson, and President Bush could reverse it. A Wall Street Journal editorial has supported what Professor J. Gordon Edwards, specialist in DDT, professor of entomology, long suspected—the reason for environmentalists’ opposition to DDT. It decreases deaths, leading to overpopulation and therefore is bad for the environment. In World War I, typhus killed more soldiers than bullets. It was then discovered that DDT has insecticidal properties. It rapidly curbed malaria in the U.S. and Europe. Then came a gifted writer, Rachel Carson, whose best seller, Silent Spring , taught the U.S. that DDT...

1. 640,329 jobs “saved/created” in Connecticut’s 45th Congressional district. 2. U.S. has high Infant Mortality. 3. 45,000 died because they didn’t have health insurance. 4. U.S. is unhealthy, only 37th healthiest in the world. 5. Social Security Trust Fund, Medicare trust fund. 6. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi despises private insurers driven by profit. 7. Passive smoke, a killer but where are the bodies? 8. DDT, miracle that saves lives from malaria, banned. 1. 640,329 jobs created and saved? Bogus. House oversight subcommittee says $136 billion has been paid out from the $787-billion stimulus package, for jobs counted, double-counted, in nonexistent Congressional districts, including the 45th in Connecticut (we have five), 26th in Louisiana, 12th in Virginia and other imaginary places. An $890 shoe order, rated nine new jobs. An Alabama housing authority on a $540,071 project, rated 7,280 jobs but the Birmingham News only found 14. Where are the grants going? “Who knows, man, ...

The Statist urges Americans to view themselves through the lenses of those who resent and even hate them. He needs Americans to become less confident, . . . and to accept the status assigned to them by outsiders—as isolationists, invaders, occupiers, oppressors, and exploiters. The Statist wants Americans to see themselves as backward, foolishly holding to their quaint notions of individual liberty, private property, family, and faith, long diminished or jettisoned in other countries. . . . -- Mark R. Levin Mark Levin in his book, " Liberty and Tyranny, A Conservative Manifesto ," demonstrates the tyranny of Statists by their positions on current issues. According to Levin on his radio show, he wrote 98 percent of the book before Barack Obama became President. Obama’s name appears only twice, but his positions are apparent on many of the issues discussed. How does the Statist operate? He attacks the Founding Fathers as slaveholders, and he favors revolutions because they cle...

With the help of Environmental Protection Agency’s Administrator, William Ruckelshaus, the media, and environmental organizations, DDT today is as rare as Mercurochrome. Article after article discusses the decades-long efforts to develop a malarial vaccine, mentioning the unsatisfactory measures in use, but omits the efficacious DDT—the greatest, the cheapest. Yet the manufacturers of DDT were among the first lawsuits targeted by the infant Environmental Defense Fund, then three guys and a clipboard. One of the three, Victor John Yannacone, Jr., spoke of those early days at the paper industry’s luncheon meeting on May 20, 1970. (We have a transcript.) Yannacone’s credentials : “I think I ought to disabuse you all, at the beginning, of some basic prejudices. . . . I have no undergraduate degree, and for those of you who wonder about my legal talents . . ., you ought to know that I have the lowest average of anybody who ever graduated in the entire history of Brooklyn Law School , which ...

Natalie Sirkin , in an eye opening column on DDT, points out the difference between pop-science and the real thing. Africa is awash with preventable diseases because false science, in obedience to Grisham's law, has driven out real science. Roger Bate is a South African who has devoted himself for decades to promoting the use of DDT in the battle with malaria in Africa . Bate in his November 5 Wall Street Journal piece, “Last Chance for DDT,” tells how the use of DDT is being undermined by environmentalists and organizations selling alternatives to DDT. Environmentalists are scaring undeveloped nations telling them that DDT causes cancer or birth defects (totally false). European Union officials are suggesting their crops would be boycotted. Within national donor agencies, teams are writing anti-malaria literature while running No-Spray programs. The U.N. is hurting. Mozambique has run a successful indoor residual spraying program, but the media ignore the news. DDT is a miracle . ...

The malaria epidemic is like loading up even Boeing 747 airliners each day, then deliberately crashing them into Mt. Kilimanjaro -- Dr. Wen Kilama When I heard about the attempts of Western countries and green groups to ban DDT while thousands were suffering from malaria I became almost speechless with anger. . . . It is revolting that the people wanting to ban DDT pretend that they somehow have people’s best interest at heart and are acting for the greater good. Green groups, governments, and donor agencies have assumed the moral high ground and yet their actions kill. -- Richard Tren In 1962, Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring” mortally wounded pesticides and particularly DDT. 1n 1972 William Ruckelshaus, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, administered the finishing blow by banning DDT. In foreign la...

An eye-opener from Natalie Sirkin that might well be titled "How Environmentalists Facilitated Malaria Among the Poor In Africa." The summer of 1971 brought the Sirkins and the gypsy-moth infestation to Sherman and Connecticut. Environmental organizations told us not to spray. In those days, we were all environmentalists. We held out till we could bear it no longer. A few days later, even they gave up. In those days we still could have had DDT. The EPA public hearing which lasted eight months was still in progress. Its decision by Hearing Examiner Sweeney would vindicate DDT completely, but soon after EPA William Ruckelshaus would overrule Sweeney’s decision. Science could help, said Ruckelshaus , but this was a political decision, which put him in charge. He and Rachel Carson were the sources for the bad on DDT. Rachel Carson , nine years earlier, had started it all. Her book started the environmental movement. Pesticides were the problem, especially DDT, and her book, Si...

The item in the Courant about Rep John Larson , a new powerhouse in the US Senate, is mercifully short, only a little more than 200 words. The Courant buried it in the fat of its folds on page 100043B. Now if only Rowland got that kind of inattention – the name of the “business” is not even mentioned – he still might be governor. It remains for a reporter more curious than Mark Peters and a newspaper more agressive towards Democrats than the Courant -- which, during the late election, endorsed all the US Democrat congressional candidates -- to find out who is the Peter Ellef of the group. And how much do these guys make anyway? According to the Courant story, “A federally funded technology center in East Hartford that has been championed by U.S. Rep. John B. Larson has appointed the congressman's chief of staff," Elliot Ginsberg, as its first chief executive officer. The three year old center, which employs 35 people and "relies primarily on federal and state funding...