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On The Eve Of Rell’s Budget Address, Let The Revolution Begin

Ours is a government practiced in the art of wolf avoidance. The wolf is now at the door, and even the most complaisant of Connecticut’s politicians are beginning to feel the leg tingles that swept over gabmeister Chris Mathews, when it became clear to him that then Sen. Barack Obama could be president.

First former President George Bush and now President Barack Obama have been standing at the federal pawn shop window throwing money out to the masses. It is no wonder that a crowd of pensioners have gathered, empty hands outstretched, to rake in the favors.

Bush favored bailing out badly stung banks, hoping the money he was throwing at bankers might be leant by them to worthy borrowers, thus making its way into the marketplace, priming the magic pump that waters us all with prosperity.

This did not happen for many reasons. Wary bankers were still feeling the impress of the thumbscrews that Sen. Chris Dodd, head of the congressional banking committee, and Barney Frank, congress’ most accomplished demagogue, put upon them so that they might lend fake money to people who could not afford mortgages. Dodd’s own mortgage has yet to be viewed by the public.

In the meantime, Obama, who became president, thus justifying Mathews’ tingles, has given up on the bankers and is tossing money out the window to the victims of Dodd’s and Frank’s largess.

In spirit, President pro-tem of the Senate Donald Williams and newly appointed Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, both long-time free spenders, have been at the pawn shop window for ages, tingles coursing up their legs. The two have glimpsed the spending hatchet in Governor Jodi Rell’s clenched fist; soon they will be begging in earnest.

Rell will unveil her proposed budget before these words see print – if they ever do see print -- and some are supposing that her budget will not frighten too much the beggars at the state capitol. Rell’s usual modis operendi has been to stick chewing gum into the cracks of the damn, hoping it will burst upon some future governor. But this time the wolf has grown to gigantic proportions because -- both the Obama administration and the enlightened leader of Iran, Mahmoud Amadinijad, tell us -- capitalism has failed. Capitalism is dead; long live socialism, or some Americanized variant of it. Much of the Middle East and Europe, wallowing for decades in the warm debilitating soup of socialism, is delighted at the prospect, even while suffering from the consequences of their dreams having come true. They will get what they wish for soon enough.

Prior to her budget proposal, Rell promised no tax increases. But in the new age now upon us – and especially in Connecticut, where voters have entrusted their lives, their purses and their sacred honor to such as Williams and Donovan – promises are but starting points on the route to a betrayal of promises.

All of which means that Rell’s budget address, after the Democrat controlled legislature finger prints and arrests it – will not amount to a hill of beans. The “hill of beans” metaphor hearkens back to ancient Greek politics in which “beans” indicated both a disposition to philosophize (yammer, in the modern idiom) and a democratic voting process (the Greeks used beans to select their governors).

A prediction: When all is said and done, nothing will be done about the wolf at the door – not here in the land of steady prevarication.

But, if these lines are seen at all, the reader should take heart. What all this bean tossing really means is that the state is ready for revolution -- revolution being the opposite of “business as usual.”

It cannot begin soon enough.

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Dr. in New York said…
I have read some of your blog...Go see mine...
www.Hillarysenateseat.blogspot.com
Dr. Noren

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