Skip to main content

Why Connecticut Can’t Cut Spending

Capitol Watch,” a bog written by two Hartford Courant reporters, is reporting that “House Speaker James A. Amann's announcement that he will not seek re-election in November set off a scramble to climb the leadership ladder.”

Presumably House members vying for the position are less experienced than the present occupant of that office, James Amann, who has announced his intention to run for governor. Amann also is less experienced in the rigors of governing the state than the present occupant of that office, Gov. Jodi Rell.

No one from the Democrat camp has yet argued that Amann should not run for governor because in doing so he will be surrendering his office to novices who lack "experience on the job."

The notion that experienced legislators may never be replaced because the state will lose technical proficiency is an argument for reestablishing a monarchy and abolishing elections. This argument is trotted out whenever the word "term limits" are mentioned, and it also figures prominently in newspaper endorsements.

Yet, oddly, when the Republicans – defying both their governor and prominent Democrats – recently suggested that the state might save some money by offering early retirement to state employees, cries of alarm were sounded: Experienced people would be lost; the state would suffer.

Alas, experienced people are lost every year through the usually process of attrition and cutting jobs in tough times is a common business practice in all companies, painful but sometimes necessary. It is not as if the Republicans were proposing to throw state workers out of the plane without a parachute. They are proposing early retirements and job consolidation to fill the gap created when some jobs are not filled.

Reduced to its essence, the Democrats are arguing that the state may never cut spending, for any reason – ever.

That argument may sooth those in state government who believe that the state must never reduce spending, ever – for any reason. Though this clamorous crowd may have purchased the ears of the Democrat majority in the legislature, they are in the minority of people in the state who have been bruised by a sour economy brought on by people who reason that spending must always go up and never come down.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Powell, the JI, And Economic literacy

Powell, Pesci Substack The Journal Inquirer (JI), one of the last independent newspapers in Connecticut, is now a part of the Hearst Media chain. Hearst has been growing by leaps and bounds in the state during the last decade. At the same time, many newspapers in Connecticut have shrunk in size, the result, some people seem to think, of ad revenue smaller newspapers have lost to internet sites and a declining newspaper reading public. Surviving papers are now seeking to recover the lost revenue by erecting “pay walls.” Like most besieged businesses, newspapers also are attempting to recoup lost revenue through staff reductions, reductions in the size of the product – both candy bars and newspapers are much smaller than they had been in the past – and sell-offs to larger chains that operate according to the social Darwinian principles of monopolistic “red in tooth and claw” giant corporations. The first principle of the successful mega-firm is: Buy out your predator before he swallows

Down The Rabbit Hole, A Book Review

Down the Rabbit Hole How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime by Brent McCall & Michael Liebowitz Available at Amazon Price: $12.95/softcover, 337 pages   “ Down the Rabbit Hole: How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime ,” a penological eye-opener, is written by two Connecticut prisoners, Brent McCall and Michael Liebowitz. Their book is an analytical work, not merely a page-turner prison drama, and it provides serious answers to the question: Why is reoffending a more likely outcome than rehabilitation in the wake of a prison sentence? The multiple answers to this central question are not at all obvious. Before picking up the book, the reader would be well advised to shed his preconceptions and also slough off the highly misleading claims of prison officials concerning the efficacy of programs developed by dusty old experts who have never had an honest discussion with a real convict. Some of the experts are more convincing cons than the cons, p