20 March—The vernal equinoxed in the Northern Hemisphere a day early this year, thanks to the 29^th day of February, at 11:06 last night, give or take. And the crocuses outside The Monitor’s vast editorial office complex have already croaked, doubtless in anticipation of the major snowstorm that’s bound to surprise Connecticut before the summer solstices.

Among the non-news is that Joe Biden and Donald Trump easily won their respective party primaries wherever they were held yesterday. And they’ll go on to make non-news in the remaining presidential primaries it’s hardly worth taking the trouble to vote in. But we do it anyway. Because we can. Without even going to the polls.

Also among non-news is that Connecticut’s ineluctably electable U.S. Senator Big Mouth, Democrat Richie Blumenthal, is yet again—or still—pandering to his constituency. His latest suck-up is to tenants paying low to moderate rents to allegedly predatory landlords who are said to manipulate their prices in order to victimize impoverished tenants.

The wicked landlords—and all landlords are wicked by virtue of being landlords, though many really are evil—are alleged by Blumenthal to use computer software that allows them to manipulate rents through collusion and other vile means not unique to business in order to maximize their profit, causing market inflation, thus victimizing poor tenants. So Richie has introduced legislation in the Senate to essentially ban the exercise of capitalism.

It must be noted here that unaffordable rents may cause poor tenants to flock to the streets, thus making them people experiencing homelessness. Or unhoused persons, as the latest term of art designates them. And unhoused persons are not as likely to vote (Democrat) as housed persons.

It must also be noted that Richie Blumenthal has long been in the vociferous vanguard of critics of price gouging during times of crisis. Being on the paying end of price gouging isn’t pleasant for consumers, to be sure, but it’s pure capitalism in action. Just like Joe Biden’s shrinkflation that reduces quantities rather than increasing prices—until the shrinkflated items cost more, of course. The poor consumer at the bottom of the food chain (figuratively and literally) ends up paying for everything—including corporate taxes.

Nor must we fail to note that Richie Blumenthal is one of the wealthiest elected pols in D.C. That’s thanks to his faithful young wife, the former Cynthia Malkin, daughter of real estate tycoon Peter Malkin, whose properties, however, including the Empire State Building, are commercial rather than residential.

Blumenthal maintains that the evil software he means to ban is cleverly “disguised” as a number of property management tools and facilitates adjusting rents to what the market will bear. He talks about price-fixing cartels and “landlords [coming] together in a smoke-filled room over whisky and cigar[s].” Ah, the good old days. Of cigars, anyway. So who needs software?

Yeah, gouging rents (and prices), although defensible, isn’t at all nice or right. But does Richie Blumenthal really think that banning software that enables scummy landlords (and retailers) from doing it will do anything at all to stop the practice? And, practically speaking, can anything on the internet be banned? Think TikTok?

Or is Richie merely grandstanding yet again?