CC: We haven’t talked with you in a while. How are you?
Cynic: Likely not as good as you, from the looks of you.
CC: Meaning?
Cynic: You are young, I am old: “I wear the bottoms of my
trousers rolled.”
CC: Ah, T.S. Elliot. And Connecticut? How goes the state?
Cynic: Politically, economically, and in other ways, it is
living up to its motto, still the “state of steady (bad) habits.” Connecticut,
under the last few governors and legislatures, has hardly scratched the surface
of its gargantuan debt. I noticed that you noted in numerous blogs that the state has an unaddressed spending problem, made
worse by political inattention. [Governor Ned] Lamont’s pretenses are becoming
wearisome. How often do we see the word “spending” presented in newspaper
accounts as a serious problem?
CC: Which of Lamont’s pretenses annoys you the most?
Cynic: His carefully crafted pretense to moderation. Moderation
among state Democrats is a laughable pretense, hardly a curtsy in the direction
of sound economics. I doubt any of the Democrat legislative gatekeepers has
read or reread lately Henry Hazlet’s Economics in One Lesson. Everyone knows Connecticut
is overrun with far left quasi-socialist legislators, including our asleep-at-the-wheel
media which, by the way, has become alarmingly unified around equally
astounding pretenses ever since the state’s independent press had been eaten
alive by Big Media. When the Waterbury Republican American went down the gullet
of the national and international Hearst chain, no one showed up at the
funeral. That paper, along with the Journal Inquirer, now a part of the same
chain, used to have bragging rights as fiercely independent newspaper outlets –
no more.
CC: What is the evidence of Lamont’s immoderation?
Cynic: Much of it is cultural, and here there is a lack of creative
give and take among Lamont, the state’s left leaning Democrat dominated General
Assembly, and those upholding traditional cultural views now abandoned by
reformist state Democrats. If one may extrapolate from positions supported by
the governor and dominant Democrats in the General Assembly on abortion, one
might suppose we are living in the pro-abortion wonderland of Planned
Parenthood, a national and international abortion provider. Connecticut’s
political models on cultural issues now eerily resemble those advanced by slithering
California Governor Gavin Newsom. The Planned Parenthood cheering section in
Connecticut is led, of course, by abortion radical U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal
who, even as the state’s Attorney General for two decades, was supporting the
organization and receiving from the abortion provider ample funding for his
reelection campaigns. I don’t recall reading in any Connecticut newspaper an
abundance of editorials holding the senator to account for his fulsome support
of Big-Abortion. A few months ago, Lamont nodded his assent to a legislative measure
that creates in Connecticut a sanctuary for those seeking surgical abortions in
states that apply sanctions to abortion providers. And the governor also wants
to stuff Planned Parenthood coffers with about $800 million tax dollars
collected from Connecticut citizens, a good many of whom object to surgical abortions
on religious or scientific grounds. Pro-abortion opponents tell us that their
coffers have been reduced during the last few decades, but they make little
attempt to account for the shortage, some of which is due to reduced support
pledges. Also, demographers tell us,
there are fewer births. In Connecticut and much of the nation, the birth rate
has fallen below a rate of birth, 2.5 children, necessary to sustain a
replacement population growth. Then too, what is the real difference between
Planned Parenthood, considered solely as a “greedy” corporate enterprise, and
the usual capitalist targets of Vermont socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders?
Both are, or should be regarded in Sanders’ socialist view of things, as greedy,
profit seeking businesses whose filthy rich CEOs unblemished socialists would
rather see committed to work camps -- after their profits have been expropriated
by a socially responsible, pro-abortion state such as China, now having
difficulty filling its empty newly constructed cities. Sanders’ view of profits
parallels former President Joe Biden’s view of energy products such as
relatively clean natural gas – who needs this stuff? Who needs profits, who
needs energy? Is it possible that Lamont really thinks windmills, in which
Connecticut has heavily invested, can replace the state’s traditional sources
of energy? Who among his business friends has not laughed at the notion? It
seems to me there is some room for skepticism, if not cynicism, here.
CC: Ah! So you do make a distinction between, skepticism and
cynicism.
Cynic: Sure, The skeptic is a man or woman who has serious
doubts that political “solutions” presented to him will solve real problems,
and the cynic knows the solutions will only worsen matters.
CC: In what camp do you place yourself?
Cynic: In matters I’ve mentioned here, I fall into the Cynic
camp. I know positively, as you do, that the “solution” to high energy prices
in the state offered by Marisa Gillett, the autocratic head of PURA – regulatory
profit limits imposed upon Connecticut’s energy delivery system -- will not
lead to lower energy prices. Former President Richard Nixon’s answer to high
prices – wage and price controls – failed spectacularly to provide relief to
anyone, including Nixon.
We’ve been there, done that. The thing has not worked,
cannot work unless ambitious neo-progressive Sanders socialists are successful
in repealing the free market system. That route leads to autocracy and away from
the liberty of non-government controlled free exchanges. When in the postmodern
period have Marxist-Leninist useful-idiotologies not led to gulags and
empty shelves?
Comments