13 June—The good news is that when I was out checking the magnificently pungent Spanish radishes and delightfully sweet assorted carrots, a red fox vixen and her little kit were in the meadow enjoying the early morning sun and focused their attention on me, allowing a reckless but lucky grey squirrel to scamper up a tree to safety. While grey foxes can climb trees, red foxes can’t. (And since greys and reds are different species they can’t interbreed.)

More good news is that Gov. Ned Lamont vetoed the absolutely ludicrous legislation that would have stealthily given striking workers what amounts to unemployment pay. Of course, the labor lobby wasn’t too happy.

Connecticut AFL-CIO boss Ed Hawthorne griped, “Gov. Lamont has failed to hear the voices of thousands of working people who urged him to stand with striking workers. The governor had a choice—stand with corporate CEOs or stand with working people. Unfortunately, he chose corporate CEOs.”

Brother Hawthorne conveniently forgot that Gov. Lamont, himself a former corporate nabob, has actually stood with working people rather more often than with corporate CEOs. It must have something to do with Ned’s common sense, fairness, and his being a Democrat.

And there’s also the political reality that while Gov. Lamont certainly heard the voices of thousands of working people who had made it clear that taxpayer-financed welfare in addition to their unions’ strike funds would have allowed them—and will allow them—to stage more and longer strikes (as well as the voices of his fellow Democrat pols), he also heard the voices of many more thousands of Connecticut taxpayers who have better things to do with their money than support strikers—even when their strikes may be justified, as many are.

The strike-based-welfare bill had passed with hardly any debate in either house of the General Assembly. Although Republicans certainly didn’t support welfare for strikers, the deal was that they’d let it go through by not filibustering till time ran out at the constitutionally mandated session adjournment—if the Democrats forgot about an even more ludicrous environmental bill that declared a climate crisis among other nonsense.

One of the vetoed bill’s many sponsors was Sen. Julie Kushner, a former Working Families Party co-chair and retired United Auto Workers vice president. When questioned on the floor about the bill, she—to put it politely—obfuscated and refused to answer direct questions.

So the strikers-welfare-pay bill was flawed in process as well as policy. Not that it made any difference.

Gov. Lamont did the right thing . . .