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This is what happened the week before Christmas:



The state budget – last fiscal year’s state budget – is about half a billion dollars in the red. A departing Gov. Jodi Rell called the legislature into session to make some serious cuts. The legislators returned to the Capitol: They came, they saw, they ran away. The legislature then called itself into session. Rell had presented it with a plan that called for semi-serious cuts. The legislature cut some tax cuts and reduced a $337 million deficit by about $12 million, according to a Courant story. This exhausted them, and even here quarrels arose on the floor when the Democrats proposed reducing expenditures for horses in the governor’s foot guard by about $77 thousand. Apparently, the horses do not belong to a union, and so the cutback was approved by Speaker of the House Chris Dovovan, the state's union flunky in the legislature. The governor asked the unions for further concessions. The unions said – no.The governor asked the legislature to make serious cuts. The legislature said – no. Why be serious about spending cuts while there are yet millionaires huddled by their yachts along Connecticut’s Gold Coast, on its way, some economists think, to becoming a new rust belt for the idle rich and the captains of industry? After this farce, everyone went home to their Christmas pudding.

Comments

Unknown said…
Have the public employee unions and their clones in publically funded (re: nursing homes) industries steered all the Dems fundraising capacity to the leadership?

In CT there are still some industrial unions but they have less and less influence except at the Courant.

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