Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The address below was given at Meriden’s Fourth Annual Lincoln Day Dinner The day is named after Abe Lincoln, and well named too. I suppose this year those attending these remarks will thank God – who else? – that they are not called upon to celebrate the Jefferson, Jackson Bailey Dinner, which used to be a day of feasting and merriment for Connecticut Democrats. This was before conscience stricken Democrats re-named their annual event. They did so because Democrats decided, three quarters of a century after President Jackson died, that he had owned slaves – who knew? -- and was not kind to American Indians. Though somewhat debased, Jackson, revered as a populist, is still regarded as the founder of the modern Democratic Party. Lincoln owned no slaves and, in fact, prosecuted a bloody Civil War to emancipate them. He had a wicked sense of humor, unlike the stern, forbidding, disputatious and humorless Andy Jackson. On one occasion, in the midst of a speech, a heckler in the aud...

The Stamford Advocate puts it this way : “[Governor Dannel] Malloy has proposed  House Bill 6851 now before the Legislature. It would create an 11-member quasi-public agency and give it control of train station projects statewide. “The agency would be called the Connecticut Transit Corridor Development Authority. Four members would be appointed by the governor and three by other political leaders in the Legislature. The other four members would be state commissioners, whose jobs are bestowed by the governor. “The new authority would have the power to seize property within half a mile of any train station, enter into contracts with private developers, build what projects it chose and sell bonds to finance them.”