18 December—The Republican-American has been taking some undeserved flak this past week for an editorial cartoon it ran 9 December over an informative column by Jonah Goldberg titled “Disdain for Harris was predictable.” The text dialogue of the cartoon by the Rev. Dick Wright: “Mom. What’s the difference between an antique and a piece of junk? [Mom answers:] One is the President and the other is the Vice President.”
(The Rev. Dick Wright? Yup, Wright gave up editorial—make that right-wing political—cartooning for the clergy but couldn’t keep away from brilliant illustrated political commentary. Easier to give up the cloth. Amen.)
The cartoon in question doesn’t even mention names, only high offices. But there’s no doubt whom Mom is referring to. So it’s no surprise that all the flak comes from disgruntled Kamala Harris supporters who bitch about the newspaper’s taste in publishing a distasteful cartoon, in allowing Vice President Harris to be referred to as junk.
Well, that’s precisely what editorial cartoons—as well as columns, op-eds, and letters, but not Republican-American editorials—do. And that’s precisely what Kamala Harris is. I’ve referred to her as a harpy and a harridan; and I’ve called the Biden-Harris duo as the hack and the hag. But antique and junk? Love it! And as an antique hack myself, I have no problem with the nomenclature.
As for the junk part, that Kamala Harris certainly is. All those things in fact. Sure, the Wright cartoon is nasty; but so is Kamala Harris. First time I saw Sen. Harris in action was at the confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice. Kamala and New Jersey Sen. Corey Booker, working as a tag team, raked Judge Kavanaugh, as he was then, over the coals. You could tell that the senators were paving the way for their presidential runs and that they both delighted in goading Kavanaugh for their own purposes. Like most politicians, out for themselves.
(Brett Kavanaugh embarrassed himself with his histrionic performance, but that’s another matter. But his performance on SCOTUS has been surprisingly good, if not entirely to my liking.)
The good news is, Kamala Harris, it seems, is even less popular than Joe Biden. So the expectation—at least the hope—is, assuming the antique survives, that the Democrats will make sure the junk will never get to be nominated for president . . .
17 December—King Ned Lamont is at it again, usurping the Connecticut General Assembly’s prerogative and powers through another ludicrous royal decree. This ukase, Executive Order No. 21-3, issued just yesterday, appears to be the raving of a spoiled brat who didn’t get his way so is doing everything he can to screw his parents just to get even.
Executive Order No. 21-3 is ostensibly His Majesty’s questionable solution to what he maintains is the climate change problem. And he’s determined to implement it come hell or high water. And high temperature, of course.
Trouble is, besides doing what the General Assembly has had excellent reasons for not doing, King Ned justifies his rash, irrational action with a specious premise. Like executive orders and resolutions in general, Executive Order No 21-3 is full of WHEREASes. I counted 30. It’s also full of other stuff we’d prefer not to get into.
This ukase assumes the politically correct panic mode of Glasgow’s COP26 dog and pony show (Gas in Glasgow—more than methane, 7 November) and in the very first WHEREAS demonstrates the specious evidence and faulty logic that drive the climate change fringe:
“WHEREAS, there is overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change, and that according to the Long Island Sound Study and the University of Connecticut, the state is already experiencing climate change impacts including 8 to 9 inches of global sea level rise since 1880, accelerating coastal erosion, a warming Long Island Sound, hotter warmest and coldest days of the year, more annual rain and snowfall, and more intense rainfall; and [blah, Blah, and blah].”
Come on, Your Majesty, for starters, the evidence for anything at all causing climate change—warmer or colder—is neither overwhelming nor incontrovertible. Certainly, we know what’s happening. But we can only speculate with no real scientific assurance or validity on why it’s happening. And to claim otherwise is just ignorant alarmist bullshit . . .
16 December—Interesting factoid without comment: Dr. Anthony Fauci was paid $434,312 in salary last year. Presidents are paid $400,000.
And another one: Nancy Pelosi, the Whore (a.k.a. Speaker) of the House of Representatives, whose family is worth millions upon millions in stocks and related goodies, has the chutzpah, the sheer arrogance, to defend the stock trading practices of her fellow congressional whores, which often involve insider knowledge. No comment there, either.
So on to the other stuff. One of the pleasures that makes going to the Litchfield post orifice worthwhile—while not justifying the extortionate fee PO box customers are forced to cough up, of course—is sifting through the undersized, usually overflowing recyclables/garbage bins.
Yesterday, in addition to the abundance of high-end Christmas catalogues and medical, dental, and optometric journals the know-it-all professionals never bother to read, there was some confidential correspondence and documentation that had been tossed by a local lawyer, concerning a Litchfield resident. I didn’t even have to open the envelope to read the juicy stuff. The papers were lying right on top of the pile of recyclables, print side up, for anybody to peruse.
Being a troublemaking busybody, I notified the client of the lawyer’s indiscreet carelessness. Or careless indiscretion. And I should say former client, because the client, unsatisfied with the careless lawyer, had found another ambulance chaser. That’s evidently why the ex-lawyer had discarded the mail. But it’s no excuse. I hope the former client takes some kind of action against the former lawyer. I suggested it. But I’m not a lawyer.
And, come to think of it, did the ambulance chaser toss the ex-client’s confidential information out of carelessness or was it anger at having been dumped?
15 December—The magnanimous (yes, I’m being sarcastic) Borough of Litchfield Board of Warden and Burgesses (BOLBOWAB) was nice enough (sarcastic again) yesterday to reverse its stupid, unconstitutional, unenforceable September order and allow yellow ribbons to be tied to trees on the Green. For now.
And the motion to rescind the September stupidity included gratuitous language reminding us that the ribbons are in violation of a borough ordinance (which they’re not) and would pave the way to all manner of displays on the Green (which is possible but unlikely, based on experience of other municipalities).
BOLBOWAB, like the borough it rules with an uncompromising iron hand, is a parody of itself, but it can do virtually anything that suits its self-aggrandizing, narcissistic fancy. No kidding. Gee, narcissistic reminds you of Donald Trump, doesn’t it? Certainly not Gayle Carr, the acting warden.
But I digress. The very poorly written borough charter, as revised in 1991, makes the legislative body “a combination of a Meeting of the borough and a Board of Warden and Burgesses. Each body,” it assures us, “shall have powers as the Charter herein prescribes.” (§ C103)
Sounds great. Problem is, the ludicrous charter goes on to assert that BOLBOWAB “shall by resolution, bylaw or ordinance exercise all powers of the borough. … [and] may make, alter, repeal and enforce bylaws or ordinances. …”(§ C401) That sounds like BOLBOWAB is an almighty municipal god. And indeed it is.
So what about the “Meeting of the borough”? The only—repeat, only—functions or powers prescribed (or allowed) to the borough meeting have to do with the disposition of real estate (§ C504) and adopting the annual budget.” (§ C601). That’s all, folks.
Special meetings of the borough may be called by BOLBOWAB or forced by petition of not “less” (should have been “fewer”) than 20 electors. (§ C502) The borough code increases that to 50 signatures. (§ 23-1) A mere 20 signatures can force a town meeting. But forcing a borough meeting is a waste of time in all events, because it has no power to do anything except suggest or bitch. Any votes taken on anything but the budget (and only at the annual budget meeting, which also is the annual borough meeting) or real estate are purely advisory. All the legislative power of the borough lies in the dicktatorial [sic] hands of the masturbatory BOLBOWAB, which is not required by its act of creation to abide by entreaties of anybody it chooses to ignore.
That’s only one of the great reasons to get rid of the Borough of Litchfield. More to follow . . .
14 December—Today is the ninth anniversary (or the nine-year anniversary, as most media people put it) of the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. To no one’s surprise, politicians like Connecticut’s two superfluous U.S. senators, Richie Blumenthal and Christopher Murphy, are using the occasion to bolster their already pretty firm standing with their comatose base.
In unsurprising, perfunctory, self-serving statements on their websites and left-wing media, Richie and Christopher reiterate their profound sorrow about the massacre and their bold determination to do whatever it takes to reduce gun violence.
Absolutely. No Americans other than Donald Trump’s moronic goons don’t want to reduce—make that eliminate—gun violence. Or any violence, for that matter. I’d like to eliminate violence against animals, too, as well as cruelty to animals and people. Fat chance.
Problem is, when activists and political opportunists talk about reducing gun violence, they really mean reducing gun ownership. Reducing violence is good. Reducing ownership is bad. Reducing gun violence is merely a euphemism for abridging and infringing the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. It sounds better, less draconian, than what the anti-gun crowd really want to do.
Don’t forget that Connecticut is a showcase and proving ground for the anti-gun set. The state Constitution says concisely and lucidly, “Every citizen has a right to bear arms in defense of himself and the state.” Yet the state’s deeply entrenched ruling party is doing everything it bloody well can to run roughshod over that right . . .
13 December—The New Hartford Planning and Zoning Commission has just by a three-to-two vote permitted Dollar General to build a store in that town. Thrilling. I actually went into a (the?) Dollar General store in Torrington several years ago. Can’t remember what I was looking for, but I didn’t find it. I couldn’t in fact find anything in that store and the staff were rude in addition to being useless.
What I did find, however, was that very few items in that Dollar General store were actually priced at a dollar. And I just read that the chain boasts—at least it says—that it sells about a fifth of its merchandise for a dollar. Only a fifth. That means four-fifths, or 80 percent, for over a dollar. So much for the dollar part.
Deceptive advertising? Your call. Remember Woolworth’s five and ten or five and dime stores of blessed memory that even in my antediluvian childhood didn’t sell much for five or ten cents? At least F.W. Woolworth didn’t use enticingly deceptive low prices in the company name.
And we got the expression “nickel and dime” from those stores. It means greedily or unfairly charging multiple small amounts for minor services, being small-minded, petty, piddling. Or, monetarily speaking, two-bit, penny-ante, twopenny-halfpenny.
That takes us to Dollar Tree, which has announced that it’s raising its one-dollar prices, which it’s been charging for most of its merchandise, to $1.25. Dollar Tree’s boss insists that the higher price point is a permanent move, not the result of “short-term or transitory market conditions.” He also says that the $1.25 price point will allow the company to offer a wider range of merchandise, including items that had been discontinued at the dollar level. He should be spinning for Biden.
People who regularly patronize so-called dollar stores often are unaware that many of the items found in them are merely offered in smaller quantity and/or different quality or composition than at non-dollar stores; and that ounce for ounce, they’d likely do better elsewhere. Same with hard goods. We won’t dwell on dollar stores’ (or anybody else’s) ungodly dependence on China.
That takes us, ever so briefly, to the self-proclaimed wholesale clubs. BJ’s Wholesale Club and Costco Wholesale Corporation and others we’ve never heard of. Wholesale? Really? As commonly understood, wholesaling is selling products, usually in bulk and at a discount, to retailers, who then sell the products to their own customers. At higher prices, of course.
The bulk part often applies to BJ’s and Costco. But they’re clearly retailers whose prices may not be all that great despite the quantities customers—sorry, members—are forced to buy.
The BJ’s and Costco corporate names are deceptive. So sue ‘em. And the club part, besides propping up their bottom lines with subscription dollars and motivating customers—er, members—to buy buy buy in order to make the costly subscriptions worthwhile, allows the retailers to do end runs around any number of consumer protections . . .
12 December—Bitching about the Kellogg Company’s refusal to be brought down by striking cereal-making employees who told their own union negotiators where to go, good old Joe Biden is posturing to make it more difficult or even impossible for employers to permanently replace striking union workers with new ones, commonly called scabs, asserting that it’s “an existential attack on the union and its members’ jobs and livelihoods.” No surprise there, given Joe’s constituency and desperation.
Nor is it surprising that the flaky governor of the Flake State (a.k.a. Gavin Newsom of California) is proposing to take advantage of the U.S. Supreme Court’s apparent blessing of Texas’s recent unconstitutional anti-abortion law to further exacerbate his state’s unconstitutional ban on firearms, as confirmed by a federal judge in June. But that ban is sure to be reversed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals before you know it.
So, following the rationale and novel legal strategy of Texas’s ludicrous trail-blazing bounty-hunter law that targets abortion providers by exploiting the innate venality and greed of human beings, flaky Newsom wants to allow private citizens to file lawsuits for at least $10,000 against anyone who manufactures, distributes, or sells so-called assault rifles and/or ghost gun kits or parts.
Except for enacting the law and providing the courts for the litigation, the state keeps out of it. Brilliant. For better or for worse, that’s capitalism in action, greed being the sine qua non of capitalism.
Given the makeup of both houses of Congress, Biden isn’t likely to get very far with his silly anti-scab posturing. But given the makeup of virtually everyone and everything in the Flake State, count on Newsom’s worrisome proposal becoming law in some form . . .
11 December—St. Louis de Montfort parishioners who faithfully worship at Litchfield’s St. Anthony of Padua Church claim to be unceremoniously freezing their ears, hands, noses, and other parts off in the red-brick church on South Street. And Roman Catholic clergy are getting lousy press. (Except Pope Francis, of course, because he’s disarmingly liberal.) So it’s refreshing to report that a Roman Catholic prelate has made headlines for doing the right thing.
Bishop Antonio Stagliano, who shepherds the diocese of Noto in Sicily (where the Mafia comes from and continues to thrive, but that’s probably irrelevant), recently told a group of kids that Santa Claus didn’t really exist. Bravo, Vescovo! And mazel tov! It was high time the church came clean with that bit of bullshit. A small step for the church, a giant leap for the truth.
But no good deed goes unpunished. So the diocese’s PR guy, the Rev. Alessandro Paolino, used the imprimatur of Facebook to put a politically astute spin on his boss’s revelation: The bishop, it seems, was merely trying to teach the kids the true meaning of Christmas. We won’t go into details, but it involves gifts. The cover of the L.L. Bean catalogue I received yesterday agrees with the PR priest that “The Joy is in the Giving.” Especially when you buy your gifts from L.L. Bean. The true meaning and spirit of Christmas.
(Editor’s note: Speak for yourselves, Father Alessandro and L.L. The joy is really in the receiving.)
Bishop Stagliano didn’t do his homework, however. He told the disabused bambini that Santa’s red costume was created by the Coca-Cola Company as a publicity gimmick. Not quite. It was actually Thomas Nast, the political cartoonist who came up with the Republican elephant symbol, who created the modern version of Santa Claus for Harper’s Weekly in the late nineteenth century. Coca-Cola merely tweaked and popularized the image during the Depression.
When I was a bambino, my mother took my brother and me to Macy’s or Gimbels a few times to bug the phony Santa. My brother and I had been disabused from birth. Mother always referred to Santa as Bupkes. For years I believed that Bupkes was the Yiddish name for Santa. I must have been about seven or eight when I discovered that bupkes actually meant “absolutely nothing, bullshit” in Yiddish. And so it has been ever since, world without end.
Heaven forfend that children should know the truth about Santa Claus, Father Christmas, or any other iteration of the benevolent Christmas elf. As grownups know, the only real and dependable Santa Claus is the welfare state.
And did anybody mention Advent?
10 December—The big news is that yesterday, 9 December, at high noon Dirk Patterson officially and formally retired and resigned as Warden of the Borough of Litchfield Board of Warden and Burgesses (BOLBOWAB; or, more exactly, WOTBOLBOWAB). I had the pleasure and privilege of being on the phone with Dirk at that significant and fateful moment in history.
Readers probably won’t recall that Dirk had announced his intention to resign and retire at no specific date at a special BOLBOWAB meeting on 31 August, which I dutifully reported on 1 September. He made it official and named the date at a special meeting on 7 December, another significant and fateful date in American history.
Having heroically and selflessly stepped up to lead the imperiled Borough of Litchfield (BOL) through the turmoil and mercenary onslaught of Chabad Lubavitach of Litchfield County Inc.’s predatory lawyers, Dirk managed single-handedly—and with considerable personal sacrifice—to save BOL taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees demanded but not deserved by Chabad’s high-end ambulance chasers.
Thus, at the very least, Dirk Patterson has earned his retirement as well as the wholehearted, undying gratitude of BOL taxpayers. Sad to say, the BOL charter doesn’t provide for a Borough of Litchfield Medal of Honor (BOLMOH), for Dirk most certainly would be a—or the—most deserving recipient.
With the warden’s retirement, the responsibility of leading and protecting the BOL devolves to the senior burgess, who now, in addition to maintaining that position, becomes the Acting Warden (AW). At this time, that would be and in fact is Gayle Carr. We hope AW Gayle Carr is more responsible with BOL finances, among other things, than she has been with her own WPCA (a.k.a. Sewer Commission) fees, which at this writing are seriously in arrears . . .
9 December—All over the country, state legislatures are facing a situation they very rarely experience: budgets that are flush with cash after a year of often record-setting surpluses. The new money comes from a fairly quick economic recovery from the novel coronavirus panic and billions upon billions in federal handouts to state and local governments.
The problem to the legislatures is, what to do with the windfall? The obvious solution to the problem is to cut taxes. And that’s precisely what legislators and governors in so-called red and blue states are doing—just in time for midterm elections, as it happens.
A dozen states have already cut corporate or personal income taxes. Another half-dozen have added tax exemptions for federal stimulus largess and unemployment benefits or reduced property and service taxes. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, and Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, have proposed cutting taxes on groceries.
The governors of Minnesota and Wisconsin wanted to raise taxes, but both signed budgets with tax reductions. Florida, Washington, Missouri, New York, and New Jersey bucked the trend and actually raised or created new income or sales taxes. Doesn’t make Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis look good for a presidential run in 2024. And, surprisingly, Connecticut hasn’t raised taxes yet, though Gov. Lamont tried. Yet is the operative word.
Other states, like Arizona (Republican) and North Carolina (Democrat governor, Republican legislature), have deals in place to gradually reduce various taxes over a number of years. That sort of rational and fiscally sound tax cutting makes sense and is being considered in several states.
The Flake State, a.k.a. California, is looking forward to a $31 billion surplus, which existing law may just force the state to return directly to taxpayers. Of course, flaky Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom is typically noncommittal on giving money back to taxpayers, boasting that the surplus “allows us to do things unprecedented in California’s history, and that is, invest in you.” Jesus, save me!
So what about Connecticut, the legendary Land of Steady Habits? Well, the state’s ledger has done quite well in the credit column, thanks to significant business and stock-market upticks, COVID immigrants, and—most of all—federal handouts.
Unhappily, one of Connecticut’s steady habits of late has been to spend spend spend every bloody penny it gets—and more—on employee benefits and so-called entitlements that are guaranteed to keep getting irresponsible big-spending Democrats (and Republicans, truth be told) elected so they can keep up the inexcusable plunder of the state’s taxpayers . . .
8 December—Today is the 135th anniversary (known to the great horde of pleonasts as the 135-year anniversary) of the founding of the American Federation of Labor, the country’s first really well-organized association of trade unions. To save you the trouble of doing the arithmetic, the AFL was founded in 1886.
The AFL was largely the brainchild of Samuel Gompers, born in 1850 in London, a Jewish New York cigar maker, like his father, who reveled in Hebrew but reviled Yiddish and was a rabid anti-socialist and more of a racist than most Jews of the time. He was a compromiser within the AFL and a national political activist for the benefit of the AFL and labor in general. He was president of the organization from its founding until his death in 1924, with a year off from 1894 to 1895.
In 1955, the AFL merged with the Congress of Industrial Organizations—which comprised unions expelled by the AFL and had itself been expelled in the thirties—to form the AFL-CIO, which survives to this day, with just over 12 million dues-paying members. Well over a hundred specialty unions have been affiliated with the AFL-CIO through the years; and about a dozen labor-friendly organizations are allied with it.
Unions certainly were needed in the nineteenth century, quite as they are now, to support and defend workers and fight abuses committed by capital—management, the employers. Abuses were far more prevalent and blatant back then, of course, but they’re still evident here and there, even given all the often intrusive federal and state regulation in the United States. More common these days, of course, are the abuses committed by unions.
The State of Connecticut is especially friendly to and exploited by unions, as if we have to be reminded; and the state’s taxpayers are systemically and systematically abused by unions that intimidate and collude with politicians, as if we have to be reminded . . .