A Primer On Connecticut Politics: Pesci On The Media, The State Of Connecticut, Notable Politicians Past And Present
Pesci |
Q: Before we get to the particulars, the details where the devil lives and breathes let me ask you some general questions.
A: Sure.
Q: When did you
first start writing for newspapers?
A: I remember my
first or second column for the Journal Inquirer (JI). I’m not sure of the exact
date. It was a column on Thurman Milner, who was then running as mayor of
Hartford on the Democrat ticket. Milner won the contest about 40 years ago and
became the first black mayor of a major city in Connecticut.
Q: Do you remember
what the column was about?
A: I do. It has long
since been consigned to the newspaper morgue at the JI.
Q: Curious that you
remember.
A: No one forgets
the circumstances involving the birth of their first commentary. The mayoralty
race was well underway when the JI stumbled upon some questionable credentials
presented by Milner. He had flourished a certificate from “Roachdale College.”
The paper discovered the certificate was produced as a result of a dormitory
scheme.
A story appeared in
due course, but no other newspapers were picking up on it. Journalism, as you
know, is ten percent thought and ninety percent repetition. I wrote a letter to
the JI and received back a note or a phone call from Chris Powell, the paper’s
Managing Editor – also, at the time, the JI’s Editorial Page Editor – asking if
the paper could print it as a column. I assented. Mr. Powell requested other columns,
and a career of sorts was launched.
Sometime later in
1992, Mr. Powell ran for the state senate on the Republican ticket against a
strong incumbent Democrat from Glastonbury. He was disappointed, but not
shocked, when he lost the race. Connecticut has been for at least three decades
as blue as Herman Melville’s inscrutable blue sky. I recall joking with Mr.
Powell at the time that he was setting himself up for a painful defeat because
he was a journalist, and many people in the state were just itching to hang all
the state’s journalists on hooks in Hell.
Not to stray too far
from the question, Mr. Powell later left the editorial page. Someone else was
hired to take his place on the page after his campaign had concluded; perhaps
he was weary wearing too many hats. He had been writing columns in the JI under
his own byline since 1969.
The new Editorial
Page Editor was, I had supposed, none too comfortable with an excess of contrary
opinion on his pages, and I lapsed into a hiatus of a few months. Up to that
point, I had been writing for the paper for about ten years. My temporary
absence from Op-Ed pages in Connecticut was cut short by Mr. Powell, who
suggested that I send future columns to a series of Connecticut papers. He was
sending his column to the same papers under his own byline. And so, here
we are.
Q: I notice you
chuckled twice: first when you said that journalism was ten percent thought and
ninety percent repetition, and again when you said editors supposed their
papers were non-ideological and non-partisan. What’s so funny?
A: Repetition in
newspaper stories lies at the very heart of journalism. Stories unfold over
time, like flowers, and essentials are always repeated. A big story – Watergate
during the Nixon administration may serve as an example – is picked up by a host
of papers and the elements of the story are always repeated in future stories.
I’m not convinced
that the tern “non-partisan” is all that useful. A newspaper that is partisan
would not consider itself so. We should recall the birth of modern American newspapers
in the post-Civil War period. Many of the leading papers of that day were
unabashedly partisan, and quite a few were little more than party organs. You
may have noticed that there is a synergy, shall we call it, between newspapers
and politicians. As incumbent politicians drift to the left, they carry the
media with them; and as the newspapers go, so go remaining politicians as yet
untouched by ideological imperatives. I can think of only one newspaper
editorial page in the state that might reasonably be styled conservative. That
would be the Waterbury Republican American. Most of the rest are left of
center. The preferred term today is “progressive,” though there are some
important differences between postmodern progressives and liberals. I am speaking
here of editorial opinion and perhaps the editorial prerogatives of publishers
and editors.
Q: Wouldn’t the
editors of most papers in Connecticut insist their papers are moderate? Another
smirk!
A: That defense
might have been true in Connecticut a few decades ago. Times change. I would
argue that the very standard by which one may calculate the ideological posture
of the media in Connecticut has shifted to the left. But it is true: Most
reporters, editors and commentators working today might consider themselves
moderate. Many have made that claim, and they are
wrong. The claim to moderation is, more often than not, a conscience salve. You
just rub a little “moderation” on your editorial page and you have proofed
yourself against the charge that you fall on the left side of the political
barricades.
Most newspapers in
Connecticut allow national conservative commentators to ventilate on their
Op-Ed pages. This is a painless concession to moderation and “fair-play.” There
may be a conservative Op-Ed writer or two ventilating about state politics in
Connecticut newspapers; if so, they have not yet disturbed the political
universe.
Presently [This
self-interview was conducted at the end of January, 2014],
Connecticut’s gubernatorial office is held by a Democrat who appears often as
possible marching energetically in union picket lines. Governor Dannel Malloy
has gone to some trouble to identify himself publicly as a progressive
Democrat. Most of his PR initiatives are readily identifiable as progressive.
He is comfortable with the progressive policy prescription of President Barack
Obama. All the leadership positions in the General Assembly are held by
progressives. The state’s entire U.S. Congressional delegation is Democrat, and
Democrat voters in the state, many of whom are not progressive but who reflexively
vote the party line, outnumber Republicans by a ratio of two to one. The old
Democrat Party apparatus one associates with Tammany Hall is still very strong
in Connecticut’s cities. The operative axioms that underlie Mr. Malloy’s first
two budgets are progressive, none more so than the tax increase in his first
budget, the largest in Connecticut history, as well as his venture into crony
capitalism.
Moderate Democrats
in the state have long since been consigned to the dustbin of political
history. Moderate Republicanism -- as represented by the three “fiscally
conservative, socially liberal” past members of the state’s U.S. Congressional
delegation -- is a desiccated corpse beyond ressurection. We see a similar
shift within Connecticut's Democrat Party. All moderate Democrats have been put
out to pasture. A Bill O’Neill or an Ella Grasso today would be moldering on
the back benches of Connecticut’s progressive Democratic Party. This is the
real universe of decisive political facts shaping Connecticut politics. The
liberal to progressive mass has a strong gravitational pull on the media. If we
ask ourselves -- “How did things get this way? Why is Connecticut, nursing a
state debt of $58 billion and rising, for all practical purposes, broke?”-- it seems proper
and plausible to lay much of the responsibility on the shoulders of
Connecticut’s left of center media. A stronger resistance to the progressive,
leftward drift might have given us a more moderate configuration, but
Connecticut’s media has for the past few decades simply succumbed to the
gravitational pull of Democratic and progressive interests. I think it may have
been [G. K.] Chesterton, himself a repentant journalist, who pointed out that
no great effort is needed to float downstream; even a dead body eventually
reaches that point at which rivers dump effulgent into the ocean, but only a
live and athletic swimmer can propel himself upstream. The media in this state has too often
cooperated with the ruling regime. The vigorous and healthful antibodies one
expects from a contrarian media in opposition to a ruling majority – the only
kind of press that deserves respect -- simply are not in evidence.
Q: That seems a
little harsh. Let’s go back to some of the political characters in the state.
Connecticut is full of them: former Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker; former
U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, now a shill, as you think, for Hollywood; former
suit-prone Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, now a U.S. Senator; former U.S.
Senator Joe Lieberman; Governor Dannel Malloy, whom you’ve called the most
progressive Connecticut governor since Wilber Cross -- a curiosity shop of
characters, including Mr. Powell, whom you seems to respect.
A: Mr. Powell is
among the best newsmen in Connecticut, and his impatience with nonsense is
refreshing. It was Mr. Powell who styled Mr. Weicker a “gasbag” in his review
of Mr. Weicker’s "fact-based" autobiography, “Maverick.” I reprinted the review, with Mr. Powell’s permission, on my blog
site, “Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes From
A Blue State." I’ve also interview him several times on the blog.
Q: What makes a good
newsman?
A: He must have an
intuitive grasp of the nature of a good story – experience and a historical
memory help -- and the will to pursue it to the gates of Hell. There’s a little
bit of Alexander Pope in every good journalist:
“Am I proud?
Yes, why should I not be,
When even men who do not fear God
Fear me?”
To arrive at Pope’s
rather immodest estimate of himself should be the ambition of any reporter or
journalist who relishes his own independence. And I’m using the word
“independence” here to indicate a sharp separation between journalists and
politicians. Mr. Powell is fond of quoting Joseph Pulitzer on the point: “A
good newspaper should have no friends.” And then too, anyone who
appreciates Fredrick Bastiat has his foot firmly planted on the right
path.
Q: In understanding
the drift of Connecticut politics during the last few decades, how important is
Mr. Weicker? He’s retired now, but still a bit of a live wire.
A: Yeah, among
journalists who seem to believe that Connecticut needs another second, left
leaning party, he pops up from time to time, most recently in an Op-Ed piece in
the Hartford Courant in which Mr. Weicker advises the Republican Party to become more like Mr. Weicker. The shape and destiny of the Republican
Party – very much on the downslide these past few decades – cannot be
understood without a careful consideration of Mr. Weicker, the last Jacob
Javits Republican in the Northeast.
Q: Javits… there’s a
name that is not likely to ring a bell in the memory of people younger than 30.
A: Mr. Weicker is
not younger than 30. Mr. Javits, a Republican U.S. Senator from New York who
professed a progressive brand of Republicanism, left politics in 1980. Mr.
Weicker has identified himself on a few occasions as a “Jacob Javits
Republican.” Mr. Powell, in his review of Mr. Weicker’s autobiography,
identified Mr. Weicker as a gasbag who used his own party as a campaign foil to
assure his re-election in a state dominated by Democrats.
Q: And you?
A: Mr. Powell has
the better and more objective view. I think it was Bernard Shaw who pointed out
that most autobiographies take liberties with the truth. Mr. Shaw said the most
truthful biography of Napoleon would have been one written by his butler, or
perhaps his discarded wife, Josephine. In his own party, Mr. Weicker was the
spreading oak in the shade of which nothing vital could grow. He also famously
– and accurately -- called himself “the turd in the Republican Party
punchbowl.” When he was chased out of the Senate in 1989 by then Connecticut
Attorney General Joe Lieberman -- a “Jacob Javits” Democrat, be it noted
-- Mr. Weicker’s home party breathed a huge sigh of relief and began earnestly
to attempt to dig itself out of the rubble.
Mr. Weicker later
ran as an independent for governor of his state and won. He imposed an income
tax on Connecticut in 1991 and then high-tailed it out of town, declining to
run for a second term on a ticket of his own invention. Democrats in
Connecticut learned from the Weicker-Lieberman race that any left of center
Democrat could defeat any Jacob Javits progressive Republican, and they’ve been
winning office ever since. In the past 16 years, beginning with U.S.
Representative Nancy Johnson and ending with U.S. Representative Chris Shays,
all the Republicans in Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation have been
replaced by progressive Democrats. And in 2004, Republicans surrendered the
gubernatorial office to Dannel Malloy, who is every bit as progressive as
President Barack Obama. The ruination of the Republican Party is Mr. Weicker’s true
legacy – that and the state income tax. When Mr. Malloy in his first budget
imposed upon the people of Connecticut the largest tax increase in state
history, Mr. Weicker commiserated. He had been there, done that.
Q: You believe Mr.
Lieberman and Mr. Weicker were leading politically parallel lives.
A: There are
astonishing correspondences between the two. Through two bruising races – the
Weicker-Lieberman race for the U.S. Senate and the Lieberman- Ned Lamont race
for the U.S. Senate – the two senators were pretty aggressive antagonists. It
was Mr. Weicker who encouraged Mr. Lamont to challenge Mr. Lieberman. Of the
two races, the Weicker-Lieberman contest was the more interesting.
Mr. Weicker, during
his 18 years in the Senate, had staked out for himself large swaths of
political territory that belonged to Democrats. He was friendly with Edward
Kennedy and Chris Dodd, whose father, Tom Dodd, he had defeated in 1971 when
Dodd the elder was reeling from scandals largely of his own making. David
Koskoff wrote a book about Tom Dodd, “The Senator From Central Casting: The Rise,
Fall and Resurrection of Thomas Dodd,” that I reviewed for one of the newspapers.
Mr. Weicker’s
campaign against Tom Dodd was, he later acknowledged, rougher than it should have been. I
made a record of Weicker’s comments on Tom Dodd when he was invited to appear
on a radio show to say some soothing things about U.S. Senator Chris Dodd. He
said, “In 1970, I made my first run for the U.S. Senate. It was a unique event
in that I was pitted against a Democrat, Joe Duffy (sic), and an Independent,
Tom Dodd — a beginning for me but an end to the distinguished career of Sen. Dodd.
Though happy to win, I wasn't particularly proud of the tough verbiage I had
landed on Dodd.”
He also left some
knuckle marks on Joe Duffey’s face. Mr. Duffey was the anti-Vietnam political
candidate of the moment. Mr. Weicker, who had called upon President Nixon to
campaign in his corner, said Duffey and other protestors like him should be in
jail. Later on, during the Watergate period, Mr. Weicker was to change his mind
about the war.
Mr. Lieberman was
familiar with Mr. Weicker’s campaign methods. During the 1989 senatorial
campaign, he attacked Mr. Weicker both from the left and the right. Much to Mr.
Weicker’s dismay, Mr. Lieberman was indirectly assisted in his campaign by
staunch conservatives such as Bill Buckley. The much abused Connecticut GOP, it
seemed, was in full scale revolt against the “turd in the Republican Party
punchbowl.”
Mr. Weicker, at long
last, was shown the door by his party. Today, Mr. Weicker says the Connecticut
GOP booted him out, presumably for ideological infidelity. But it was Mr. Weicker
who had initiated divorce proceeding many years earlier; the final and fatal
break was merely formalized with his loss to Mr. Lieberman. No one – not even
he, it must be supposed – was surprised.
During the
Lieberman-Lamont race, Weicker and the Weicker-likers in the Democratic Party
teamed up against Mr. Lieberman, but to no avail. Mr. Lieberman slipped the
noose. Mr. Weicker and Mr. Lieberman were both liberals of a kind. A liberal
group, the Americans for Democratic Action, rated Mr. Weicker in 1986 the most
liberal Republican in the Senate. His rating was 20 points higher than that of
Senator Chris Dodd. The bizarre notion of Mr. Weicker as a centrist was, even
then at the apex of his senatorial career, preposterous. It was a fiction
promoted by liberals who no doubt appreciated Mr. Weicker’s service in
rendering harmless anyone in the Republican Party who displayed toxic
conservative symptoms.
Q: Mr. Weicker
declined to run again as governor. Had he done so, would he have won?
A: No.
Q: But he did say in
an interview that ran in Connecticut magazine that he thought he could win.
A:
The Republican Party in Mr. Weicker’s own state has never nominated a conservative for high office. Mr. Weicker’s nuisance value has ebbed since he left office. If you pull the electric cord out of the plug, you disable its power. A senatorial re-election campaign following his loss to Lieberman would have forced an awkward defense of the income tax in a general election. That tax was popular only among progressives in Mr. Weicker’s state. The tax changed the character of Connecticut and opened the flood gates to improvident spending. By the time Mr. Malloy was elected governor, spending in the state had tripled -- and the coffers were empty. Interestingly, the amount of the deficit faced by Mr. Malloy in the post-income tax period was, almost to the dollar, the same as it was when Mr. Weicker inaugurated his income tax. No one from O’Neill to Malloy had seriously addressed the spending side of the budget. A few months after Mr. Malloy was installed as the first Democratic governor, since O’Neill had declined to run again as governor, Mr. Weicker lamented, “Where did it all go?” And I replied in a column, “Into the black hole, you ninny.”
Q: Mr. Weicker’s
right hand man, Tom D’Amore, died recently and suddenly of a heart attack. His
funeral drew quite a few people.
A: Yes, deservedly
so. He was a nice man. During the height of the Cold War, a British agent was
asked whether he could defend another agent who had gone over to the enemy. He
said that if he were ever forced to choose between his country and his friend,
he hoped to God he would have the good sense to betray his country, so
imperious are the claims of friendship. The same might be said of Mr. D’Amore’s
relationship with his friend, Lowell Weicker. After Mr. D'Amore had been more
or less appointed Republican Party Chairman by then Senator Weicker, he
assured the Republicans who had confirmed him as Chairman that he was not
interested in presiding over the demise of the Republican Party.
But he did -- he and
Mr. Weicker. Rebuffed in his senatorial campaign with Mr. Lieberman by the very
Republicans he had scorned over the years, Mr. Weicker had a second act as
governor, in the course of which he imposed his income tax on the state that
had rejected him. Some people at the time suspected that spite of some kind was
roiling in Mr. Weicker’s veins. But it is equally likely that Mr. Weicker felt
he was tying a knot in his ambiguous legacy by imposing an income tax on the
state.
Within the space of
two succeeding Republican governors, the state budget tripled. After Mr. Malloy
had become governor, the first Democratic chief of state in Connecticut since
the departure of Mr. O’Neill, he imposed a massive tax increase to discharge a
massive deficit, the result of profligate spending made possible by the
Weicker’s income tax. Mr. Weicker was asked to comment on the new Democratic
governor’s massive tax increase, the largest in Connecticut’s history, during a
function attended by elder statesmen at the Hartford Club. Mr. Weicker heartily
commended the governor for his steely courage and said he understood the
necessity of tax increases. So, one imagines, did Mr. D’Amore.
Q: Senator Joe
Lieberman ran aground on the same rocks, you believe.
A: Not quite, but
the political Odysseys of both Mr. Weicker and Mr. Lieberman were eerily
similar. Both were senators of long standing: One, Mr. Lieberman, a liberal
Democrat whose foreign policy views were shaped by years of opposition to
Soviet communism in its various permutations; and the other, Mr. Weicker, whose
politics were shaped by a politically profitable resistance to what one might
call Reagan Republicanism. Both took a bridge too far, Mr. Weicker far more
often and more exuberantly than Mr. Lieberman. Both were sensible that
they were operating in New England, about which Barry Goldwater said: If you
lop off California and New England, you’ve got a pretty good country. Mr.
Lieberman endorsed John McCain for president over Democratic nominee Barack
Obama, causing Democratic heads back home to explode. Mr. Weicker’s spousal
abuses of his party nominees are perhaps too many to mention. One of U.S.
Senator Chris Dodd’s Republican opponents, Republican Party nominee for the
U.S. Senate Roger Eddy, popped down to Washington to secure Mr. Weicker’s
support and was assured by Mr. Weicker that he could count on him 100 percent.
Mr. Eddy returned home whistling “Happy Days Are Here Again,” only to hear, on
the eve of the election, Mr. Weicker’s radio endorsements of Mr. Dodd – the
revenge of “the turd in the Republican Party punchbowl.” Mr. Weicker was
punished for his party lapses when liberal Democrats in his state and
Republicans tuned towards Lieberman in the Weicker/Lieberman senatorial race.
And progressive Democrats in Connecticut attempted similarly to punish
Lieberman by flocking to Weicker preferred candidate Ned Lamont in a Democratic
primary. Mr. Lamont won the primary but lost the general election to Mr.
Lieberman, who by that time had discovered the benefits of party independence.
Mr. Lieberman ran as an independent senator and won; Mr. Weicker ran as an
independent governor and won. But that history is not likely to repeat
itself.
Q: Why not?
A: It takes a
politician full of years in Congress to pull it off, and the present members of
Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation are – what shall we say? –
light-weights. Both Connecticut U.S. Senators Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy
are new arrivals. It takes a good long time for a U.S. Senator to grow a beard
and, at least in Connecticut, all the long beards have drifted off to greener
pastures elsewhere. Mr. Weicker hanged himself with an income tax. Mr. Dodd is
now lobbying in Hollywood. Mr. Lieberman has attached himself to a prominent
law firm as a lobbyist. Before they had kicked the dust of the Senate from
their feet, both Mr. Dodd and Mr. Lieberman had vowed, but not on a stack of
Bibles, to eschew lobbying. It’s sure a strange world, isn’t it?
Q: But all that is
in the past, so much water under the bridge. Can we talk a bit about the
present and the future?
A: Yes. But
remember, the past exercises a gravitational pull on the present.
Q: How would you
describe the correlation of political forces in Connecticut today?
A: There is no enemy
to the right in Connecticut, never has been. And in the absence of strenuous
opposition, the state has moved very far to the left. Most Democratic
politicians, who were alive and kicking in, say, 1990, the last year of the
O’Neill administration, would be dismayed at the leftward drift. President
Richard Nixon, shortly after he had taken the country entirely off the gold
standard, used to say, much to the annoyance of the late Bill Buckley, “We are
all Keynesians now.” Similarly, it might be said by Mr. Malloy, “We are
all progressives now.”
Mr. O’Neill’s first
term saw a rapid increase in spending, owing mostly to the boom period in the
1980s that had produced successive budget surpluses. The surpluses spurred
spending, which resulted in a higher budget ceiling. When the boom ended, as
all booms must, no serious attempt was made by O’Neill administration Democrats
to lower the ceiling through spending cuts. Improvident spending had produced a
deficit, which in turn led the way to so called “tax reform.” The O’Neill
deficit opened the door to an income tax. Mr. Weicker waltzed through the
opening, and his “tax reform” relieved all state legislators at the time of a
mounting pressure to reduce spending. What profligate spender, given the
resources, would choose to reduce spending rather than buy votes by providing “walking
around money” to his supporters?
Facing a similar set
of circumstances in 2011, Mr. Malloy “pulled a Weicker.” The Malloy tax
increase, the largest in Connecticut’s history, raised the spending ceiling.
Connecticut is now the highest taxed state in the nation, and as such it is
poorly positioned for a quick recovery if the rising tide
mentioned in a memorable speech by President
John Kennedy ever does lifts all the boats. I do say “if” because
progressive proposals adopted both in Washington and at home in Connecticut
have delayed a national and state-wide recovery. All this is background music,
but the correlation of forces in the state, including a compliant, left of
center media, is such that these harsh notes reach the ear as bewitching music,
a song of sirens beckoning sailors to the rocks.
Q: But the
Republican response to what you call the siren song has more or less fallen on
deaf ears here in Connecticut. Are Republicans not shouting loudly enough?
A: I think the
alternative message promulgated by Democrats, part of the siren song, is more
alluring. Theirs is a bread and circus remedy. The Republican message is that
wealth, real wealth, is created wholly in the private marketplace by
entrepreneurs who are free to create products people want. The free flow of
marketable intelligence is curtailed when the government aggressively,
unnaturally and unnecessarily directs the flow. Democrats say: Not to worry,
there’s nothing we can’t fix; and they proceed to offer a series of fixes,
sometimes involving their political cohorts, that worsen matters. Long term
solutions imposed from above on a quasi-free market rarely produce beneficial
effects. The progressive is a Chanticleer convinced the sun cannot rise if he
does not crow it up each morning.
Q: These would be
the crony capitalists.
A: Yes, progressive
crony capitalists. Honoré de Balzac used to say that behind every great
fortune lies a great crime. Nowadays, behind every great fortune lies a
politician dispensing favors. And please don’t think that purist Democrats have
no blood on their hands. It has been common among Democrats in Connecticut,
champions of the proletariat, to launch rhetorical missiles at rich Republicans
during campaigns. Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate Linda McMahon’s leaky
boat was sunk by commentators who never failed to mention her self-financed $50
million dollar sputtering campaign.
That’s fine: All’s
fair in love and politics. The victor in the race was Dick Blumenthal,
now the 6th richest Senator in Congress. Mr. Blumenthal’s
campaign suffered a bump in the road when he was shown several times in several
different venues saying or strongly implying that he had served as a marine in
Vietnam. These were bald-faced lies. Mr. Blumenthal said he had misspoken, and
the bump was quickly surmounted.
U.S. Representatives
Rosa DeLauro and Jim Himes, both Democrats, are millionaires. Mr. Dodd
exchanged his Senate chair for a $2 million a year salary as a Tinsel-town
hawker, and if Mr. Lieberman has ever suffered proletarian want in the Senate,
he is about to be richly rewarded for it.
Mr. Weicker, whose
grandfather was a successful business man, earned most of his money the easy
way. Now that Mrs. McMahon – who ought not to have been elected to the Senate
for a fistful of reasons – has been got out of the way, one expects to hear few
complaints in the future from Connecticut's “non-partisan” media concerning the
corrupting influence of personal wealth. How can you urge that point of view
when three of the seven members of Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S.
Congressional delegation are millionaires? The real corrupting influence in
politics today lies in mutually beneficial political exchanges between powerful
politicians and crony capitalists on the right or left who prosper because of
their efforts. These efforts always create disabling distortions in the market
place and rarely help the majority of creative wealth producing entrepreneurs
unattached to large corporations.
Q: But you can’t fit
all that on a bumper sticker.
A: Right. “Raise the
minimum wage” fits. It’s a campaign battle flag rather than a useful proposal.
The flag indicates that those in favor of the proposal have chosen to place
themselves in the trenches with the poor and dispossessed. How many heads of
household in Connecticut make no more than minimum wage? Probably not many.
Most minimum wage earners are part time workers in households with an average
annual income of $50,000. Others are kids socking away a few bucks to defray
the cost of their increasingly expensive college loans. After Governor Malloy
gave UConn millions of tax dollars, the university boosted its tuition fees.
The minimum wage raises the cost of labor for smalltime employers who either
will or will not be able to recover sometimes slight profits by increasing the
cost of their product or service. That loss may be recovered by reducing the
hours of full time employees, laying off workers or reducing the quality of the
product or service rendered, unintended consequences none of which are likely
to help aspiring college students or, say, a child in poor section of a city
who would like to contribute his fair share to the upkeep of his household. The
minimum wage in Connecticut is also connected to union salaries by means of
contractual escalator clauses; so any across the board increase in the minimum
wage benefits powerful special interest groups in the state such as state
employee unions that, some say, provided the edge to Mr. Malloy during his
second run as governor.
Q: Are people so
easily fooled?
A: Some are, enough
are. It was Lincoln who said “You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and all of the people some of the time; but you can’t fool all the people all
the time,” though that would seem to be the ambition of many politicians.
Q: Thanks. It’s been
fun. Let’s do it again.
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