“I can’t stand it! Why should that little cretin Murphy get all the attention? Oil up my wheelchair, honey, I’m going to Danbury!”

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What Blumenthal and his fellow Democrats are screaming about is the recent arrest of 65 illegal aliens in Connecticut. Here are some of the people “DaNang Dick” wants back on the streets (but not, surely on his home street of Clapboard Ridge):

California Scheming II

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the wrong person’s wearing a mask here

As seen on InstaPundit:

A MILLION HERE AND A MILLION THERE…: California ‘Anti-Poverty Activist’ And Dem Mega-Donor Pleads Guilty To Massive Carbon-Credit Scam.

Joe Sanberg, a top California Democrat activist who decried the corruption of big Wall Street banks and started a company marketed as the “cleaner” alternative, actually propped that company up through blatant fraud, he admitted Thursday.

Sanberg and other high-profile Democrats started the carbon-credit platform and online banking app Aspiration Partners Inc., promising to plant trees and not invest in polluting industries. Its motto was “clean rich is the new filthy rich.” It was once a star of the “environmental, social, and governance (ESG)” movement that blended corporate finance with leftist politics, and counted actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr. as investors.

But it was instead a scheme as corrupt as any on Wall Street [well, there’s a lot of competition for that title — Ed] with Sanberg concocting fake customers for his tree-planting services to try to dupe investors into a $2 billion valuation, the Department of Justice said. Sanberg faces up to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of wire fraud, according to the Department of Justice.

Sanberg is a key player in California politics, a Gavin Newsom donor who personally spent $11 million backing a ballot initiative to raise the state’s minimum wage to $18 an hour. Voters blocked the initiative by one percentage point in 2024. A 2019 Atlantic story headlined, “Joe Sanberg Dares Trump to Call Him a Socialist,” said “the multimillionaire investor says the Democrats’ progressive agenda is best for jobs and economic growth.”

California scheming

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Eight dollar a gallon Gasoline? Don’t blame me, it’s the oil companies: They’re screwing you, They’ve been screwing you for years and years and years. There’s no other way to put it.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, for his part, has blamed fossil fuel companies for the state’s high gas prices, saying the firms have been price gouging for a long time. “They’re screwing you,” Newsom said in October. “They’ve been screwing you for years and years and years. There’s no other way to put it.”

Powerleine’s Scott Johnson asks,

Who’s screwin’ who?

Johnson: “Brittany Bernstein gives a preview of coming attractions in the National Review column “California Gas Prices Are Out of Control — and They’re About to Get Worse” (behind NR’s paywall). Bernstein begins with the widely reported projection by USC Marshall School of Business Professor Michael Mische in his March 2025 paper “A study of California gas prices.” This should do wonders for presidential wannabe Gavin Newsom’s nascent campaign:”

California gas prices could jump to $8 per gallon in 2026 thanks to the planned closure of two oil refineries in the state, according to an estimate by the University of Southern California.

Valero’s Benicia Refinery near San Francisco and Phillips 66’s Wilmington Refinery near Los Angeles are both slated to close in the coming year.

In explaining the company’s decision to close its Benicia refinery, Valero CEO Lane Riggs said on an earnings call that California’s tough “regulatory enforcement environment” was the main factor driving the closure of the state’s sixth-largest refinery.

The April announcement came six months after regional and state air regulators fined the company $82 million for exceeding toxic emissions standards for more than 15 years.

Meanwhile, Phillips 66 announced the closure of its Los Angeles refinery, the seventh largest in the state, just 72 hours after California passed ABX2-1, which requires refiners in the state to hold additional inventories of finished gasoline stock. The company attributed the closure not to any specific California policy but due to “long-term uncertainty” around the future of the refining business in the state.

And Chevron announced last year it would move its headquarters out of San Ramon, Calif., to Houston, Texas, because it was becoming increasingly difficult to do business in the Golden State.

Bernstein then turns to Professor Mische himself:

“We have legislated ourselves into a situation where the costs are extraordinarily high and the political environment is extraordinarily harsh,” said Michael Mische, a professor in the practice of management and organization at USC who authored the paper predicting $8-per-gallon gas.

“So the refiners, I think, got to the point where they just said, ‘Enough is enough. We can’t operate under these conditions.”

Experts are predicting dire consequences; the two refineries represent almost 20 percent of in-state gasoline production, or around 6 to 6.2 million gallons of gasoline per day.

….

Already, California gas prices regularly sit 40 percent higher than the U.S. average, a difference attributable to “supply issues, the CA special blend of gasoline (which is only sold in California) and a layering of taxes and fees on the shoulders of consumers,” according to Mische.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, for his part, has blamed fossil fuel companies for the state’s high gas prices, saying the firms have been price gouging for a long time. “They’re screwing you,” Newsom said in October. “They’ve been screwing you for years and years and years. There’s no other way to put it.”

Johnson asks a good question: “… Newsom’s demagogic inanity raises the question why they’re not “screwing you” in the California fashion all across the United States.”

Mische disputes Newsom’s claims, finding in his recent research that the state’s high gas prices are “self-inflicted.” His study of 50 years of gas prices found no widespread evidence of price gouging, either by gas station owners or refiners or oil producers in the state.

“It is [apparent] that policymakers are trying to use regulations, taxes, and fees to drive up the costs of gasoline and force California consumers into EVs,” he told NR.

The 2035 mandate banning the sale of gas-powered cars “created the coffin” for refiners, and then a series of regulatory actions afterwards, including a requirement that refiners must maintain an inventory of gasoline stock and report to a Department of Petroleum Market Oversight, were the final nails in the coffin, Mische said.

“I think the refiners have just been throwing their hands up in the air and saying if we’re out of here in 2035, we might as well get out of here now, there’s no use putting hundreds of millions of dollars into this.”

And because poor people don’t want to live in fear, we can expect an exodus from the city to new 8-30g projects in CT towns.

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Not even driving while intoxicated? Assault? (!)

I wonder how much Manhattan-based low-income housing developer Vessel Technologies is contributing to his campaign?

Zohran Mamdani wants to end all misdemeanor charges

Democratic mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani and his comrades at the Democratic Socialists of America want to wipe out the enforcement of all misdemeanor offenses, The Post has learned.

In its most recent platform, the group blasts policing and detention as “instruments of class war” designed to “guarantee the domination of the working class” — and demands an end what it calls “the criminalization of working-class survival.”

“For all of the working class to achieve collective liberation we must constrain, diminish, and abolish the carceral forces of the state — from prisons and police themselves, to their manifestations in all forms throughout society,” according to the national party’s latest platform, adopted in 2021.

On the campaign trail, Mamdani has repeatedly called for police to stop focusing on what he’s referred to as “non serious crimes.”

….

The DSA has also pushed to slash arrests, gut prosecutors’ budgets, abolish cash bail and all forms of pre-trial detention, scrap electronic monitoring, and end imprisonment for parole violations.

Mamdani, a Queens assemblyman and member of the NYC chapter of the DSA and its endorsed mayoral candidate, has questioned the purpose of prisons and repeatedly called to roll back punishment on so-called “non-violent offenses” – both as an Albany lawmaker and in his Gotham mayoral campaign. 

He doubled down on his longstanding push to legalize prostitution this week.

And Mamdani has even tried to challenge the definition of a violent offense.

“What violent crime is – is defined by the state,” he said at a 2021 protest outside the Manhattan DA’s office to nix cash bail and shut down Rikers – a promise he’s still making. ” Violence is an artificial construction,” he said at the time.

The misdemeanors the DSA wants to erase aren’t minor slip-ups. In the Empire State, they include theft or shoplifting up to $1,000, drug possession, assault without a weapon and even driving while intoxicated.

“They’re driving the city into a hole that’s never going to recover,” said Susan Ginsburg, a resident of Greenwich Village, which has descended into a lawless drug den since soft on crime policies created what neighbors have decried as a revolving door of justice.

….

To end misdemeanor arrests, Albany would have to pass a bill decriminalizing or downgrading those charges.

Gov. Hochul – who has yet to endorse her fellow Democrat – doesn’t back defunding the police.

If elected mayor, Mamdani can’t change state laws, but does have influence over how they’re enforced. He could force the NYPD to deprioritize certain arrests or pressure district attorneys not to prosecute certain cases – much like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg did in his controversial “day one” memo telling staff to go soft on armed robberies and drug dealing.


Now you see it ...

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A wealthy Connecticut suburb is facing down a Manhattan-based real estate development firm that wants to build a 75-unit affordable housing project — with well-heeled residents calling it an “insult” to Bethel’s small-town vibes. 

The developer, Manhattan-based Vessel Technologies, is warning officials in the Fairfield County town of Bethel that they face expensive litigation if they reject the company’s five-story, 75-unit apartment complex, the Hartford Courant reported.

The stark warning came during a heated planning commission meeting last week where Vessel’s attorney delivered a blunt message about the state’s 8-30g law that severely limits towns’ ability to block affordable housing projects.

“And the cost of litigation is not something to be just disregarded,” attorney Jason Klein told commissioners last week — a comment that was perceived by town officials as a threat, the Connecticut Post reported.

Vessel wants to construct its signature five-story building on nearly 4.5 acres along Nashville Road, but offered a compromise of just four floors following heavy neighborhood pushback this summer.

Bethel residents object to the project, blasting its five-story — later four-story — height and 75-unit scale as completely out of step with the town’s low-rise, single-family character.

Many also take issue with the steel-and-glass design, calling it an “insult to Bethel” and a disruption of the community’s village feel, according to Greenwich Time.

Neighbors also warn of worsening traffic, parking shortages, safety issues, loss of privacy and environmental impacts from stormwater to wildlife.

Despite these complaints, officials admit state law leaves them little room to reject the project unless they can prove serious health or safety risks.

Vessel has emerged as perhaps Connecticut’s most controversial developer, specializing in stark steel-and-glass buildings and targeting wealthy suburbs with projects that trigger the 8-30g statute.

Town officials in Bethel acknowledge that they are likely to lose in court given a new state law mandating construction of affordable housing.

Connecticut’s 8-30g law makes it easier for developers to build affordable housing in towns where less than 10% of homes meet affordability standards by letting projects override many local zoning rules. The latest figures show Bethel’s affordable housing stock stands at around 5%.

As of July, the median home price in Bethel was around $582,000, according to realtor websites. These figures mark a sharp year-over-year increase in the town’s housing market.

Bethel is also home to some of America’s wealthiest residents. The median household income in Bethel is about $115,135 — well above the national median household income of $77,700.

Bethel, in Fairfield County, is about 4.1 square miles with a population of 11,582, according to 2020 Census statistics.

Vessel has proven ruthlessly willing to sue when communities resist, winning a court-brokered compromise in Simsbury and pursuing active lawsuits against Newtown and Glastonbury.

Last year, Vessel submitted a plan to build two apartment buildings totaling 136 units on Berkshire Road in the Sandy Hook section Newtown — not far from the elementary school where 26 people, including 20 children, were killed in a mass shooting in 2012.

But the local Planning & Zoning Commission denied the plan in February, citing the lack of a required “will-serve” letter from the local water utility, which was under a moratorium after storm damage raised supply concerns.

Vessel appealed, arguing there were no true health or safety issues that outweighed the state’s affordable housing mandate, leaving the case to the courts.

Two years ago, Vessel sued Rocky Hill when officials balked at a five-story building with 30 apartments on a high-visibility site near the planned town center.

Negotiations ultimately led to Vessel relocating to an out-of-the-way location but securing permission for 96 units in exchange.

Now Bethel faces the same playbook after rejecting Newtown’s proposal just six months earlier.

Klein repeatedly hammered commissioners about the legal realities they face under 8-30g.

“8-30g is the law and it’s important to follow the law, so we want to make sure the record is clear,” Klein warned.

“Case law is very clear: To find a health and safety concern, it has to be more than a mere theoretical possibility. Mere concern alone is not sufficient.”

Josh Levy, executive vice president of Vessel, told The Post that Bethel’s current housing inventory “leaves teachers, first responders, service professionals, and young people who want to return home with almost no housing options.”

“Right now, a modern one-bedroom home in Bethel starts at $2,300 per month. For a teacher earning the average starting salary of $50,000, that’s over 55% of their take-home pay—well beyond what’s sustainable,” Levy said.

He said the company has been “working with Bethel’s planners for months” about addressing local residents’ concerns about height and design.

“We provided an alternative plan that reduced building height and stories to better fit into the surrounding neighborhood, has fewer total units than initially proposed, and provides a redesigned façade with materials and finishes that blend naturally with the area’s treed landscape,” Levy said.

When asked if Vessel will take legal action against the town, Levy said that “we believe in collaboration” and “continue to look forward to working with the town to create exceptional homes that are safe” — but that “attorneys remain involved because part of their job is to ensure that both the process and the record stay consistent with Connecticut law.”

Now blame Trump for gasoline prices

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Welcome back, smelt, goodbye, electricity

Dissembling on energy prices is practiced by politicians and green types everywhere. Newscum and his Democrats blew up hydropower damns, shut down nuclear plants, reduced the number of refiners fron 50 in the 80s to 7 today, imposed impossible emissions for cars, banned the use of natural gas for hearing and cooling homes and businesses, and are on track to triple the use of electricity at huge cost, but all of that is going on in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, Michigan, Minnesota, and so on. “Wind and sunshine are free”, they exult, “so energy prices will fall.” The conveniently forget to mention the costs incurred in building and maintaining the infrastructure required to produce and transport this unicorn urine, and forget to mention that building the batteries to store all that 'free” energy is impossible, even while spending billions on the failed attempt.

Sale of Aquarion to CT RWA would be ‘a costly loser,’ Tong says

Attorney General William Tong urged state regulators on Friday to block the proposed sale of the Aquarion Water Company to a quasi-public utility, the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority. 

The proposed sale, worth $2.4 billion, was announced in January by Aquarion’s owner, Eversource, and is currently under review by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority. 

Aquarion points out the obvious:

“Regardless of ownership, any future rate changes for local water customers will be a function of the costs of significant investments needed to meet federal and state environmental regulations, including remediation of forever chemicals in our water supply — an issue that Attorney General Tong and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have strongly supported for years,” Ratliff said.