When the coroner bends over the body and pronounces
Connecticut officially dead, some people, among them the enlightened members of
the state’s dwindling editorial boards, will want to know the details: What
finally did the patient in, and could the mortally ill patient have been saved
had our political prescriptions been different?
The coroner’s likely verdict will be that Connecticut died
as lobsters do when they are put in a pot of cool, salted water, the heat being
gradually raised to the boiling point. At the beginning of the process, the
lobster thinks it has finally arrived home in Homer’s welcoming, wine-dark sea;
but, as the water grows hotter, its plight gradually begins to dawn upon it.
It’s cooked; there is no exit.
After the coroner’s verdict has been issued, forensic
historians will be probing the dead tissue and asking the same question put by
Jim Powell in a Forbes story titled ominously “How
Did Rich Connecticut Morph Into One Of America's Worst Performing Economies?”
Some forensic
historian may point to May 2015 as the tipping point, the slide down the
slippery slope from which there is no return. In the middle of the merry month
of May, the Yankee Institute,
Connecticut’s premier conservative think tank, published a poll commissioned from
Data & Strategy that examined “the current state of public
opinion among likely general election voters in Connecticut around the issue of
the current budget proposals and the constitutional spending cap.”
The study
notes that “82% of voters agree with spending cap,” and “70% support the
current structure of the spending cap.” These percentages exceed even the study’s
data showing nutmeggers’ disdain for high taxes: “Neither raising taxes nor
increasing spending above the state cap is a good thing if you will be on the
ballot in 2016. 70% of voters are less likely to support lawmakers if they vote
to increase taxes. 73% of voters are less likely to support lawmakers if they
vote to increase spending above the constitutional cap.”
The study does not note how easily Connecticut’s General
Assembly, weeks before the study was published, compromised the constitutional
spending cap – through the expedient of moving previously capped funds outside
the strictures of both the statute and the constitutional provision, the
purpose of which was to control spending. This was beyond the purview of the study. It was as if the Democrat dominated
General Assembly were to define down the very meaning of the word crime and
then declare that crime in the state had been diminished through the progressive programs
of enlightened legislators. Wait for it.
The pool of controlled spending under the cap once included
pension payments – a huge block of money; Connecticut’s pension liability
was hovering around $44 billion, according to a story reported in 2011 by the New London Day,
which noted ominously, “It would cost each man, woman and child in the state
$12,157 to close the $44 billion funding gap afflicting the state's two largest
pension systems [for state workers and teachers] and its two retiree health benefit programs. Since the
mid-1990s, the state rarely has met its required contribution, although it did
so in 2013.”
Removing pensions from the cap allowed progressives in the
legislature, with the approval of Democratic leaders in both chambers, to raise
new revenue to meet the new ceiling created by the removal of pension payments.
And the Democrats desperately needed a new ceiling.
Why? Because Democratic Governor Dannel (“the Porcupine”)
Malloy had just sent to the Democratic dominated General Assembly a budget
proposal that included expenditures of $100 billion over 30 years to repair the
state’s crumbling transportation architecture that was supposed to have been
financed through a dedicated fund that drew money from the state’s
highest-in-the-nation gas taxes. Over the years, the “lockbox” containing the supposed
dedicated funds was rifled by spendthrift legislators who used the money mostly
to cover deficits created by a Democratic dominated legislature that could not
and would not reduce its level of spending.
Connecticut “lockboxes” are regularly raided by politicians,
dedicated funds are quickly undedicated, and spending caps are regularly doffed
by the legal eagles who lead legislators by the nose down primroses paths strewn
with promises of responsible and frugal spending. Neither the crooked spirit
nor the wayward flesh of Connecticut’s governors or legislators is willing to
cut spending. And, despite what many have heard from UConn economists, state
union workers and others whose careers in
and out of government depend upon a continual rise in the level of spending – it is spending, spending, spending that is
driving once rich Connecticut into a too early grave.
Ironically, the one person in the state who might pull the
lobster from the pot – by opening an entente with Republicans in the General
Assembly – is Mr. Malloy. He won’t do it.
Comments
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The late great Willmoore Kendall located the American Tradition within, among other symbols, our Fundamental Orders. It was self- government of a virtuous people through deliberation. If you are right, as I believe you to be, that we are as the lobster in the slowly but inexorably cooking pot, we must have gone off the track some time ago, probably at least as far back as our nifty 1965 Constitution. Self-governing lobsters don't end up in the soup unless there's some serious misrepresentation made to them. For my money the fundamental misrepresentation of who we are was in proposing that we are dedicated to a particular idea of equality. But,on a day-to-day basis,the damage caused by the social welfare programs, especially our education machine, and the impossible costs of those programs (as administered by union workers) are ignored or concealed.
With regard to Homer, to the wasting of Connecticut, and to its unlikely rescue: what we can be seen to have is the Suitors of Penelope eating Connecticut out of house and home. Would that we were to have our own Nutmeg Odysseus return to Hartford to conduct a restoration analogous to the one executed on Ithaka that day in the summer of 1353 B.C. The Dannel Malloy Democratic Party assembled in its multitudinous constituent ethnicities and organized communities, groups, and associations could play the part of the Suitors, taking from the rich to give to Themselves. In the mean time, while we wait for Odysseus to fly inconspicuously into Bradley to Take Connecticut Back, by all means let's have discounted college education and driver's licenses for illegal aliens and, of course, let's send John Rowland to jail.
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The next day, at Athena's prompting, Penelope maneuvers the Suitors into competing for her hand with an archery competition using Odysseus' bow. The man who can string the bow and shoot it through a dozen axe heads would win. Odysseus takes part in the competition himself: he alone is strong enough to string the bow and shoot it through the dozen axe heads, making him the winner. He then turns his arrows on the Suitors and with the help of Athena, Telemachus, Eumaeus and Philoteus the cowherd, he kills all the Suitors. Odysseus and Telemachus hang twelve of their household maids, who had betrayed Penelope or had sex with the Suitors, or both; they mutilate and kill the goatherd Melanthius, who had mocked and abused Odysseus.
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Early in the battle with the suitors, Eumaeus and Philoetius catch Melanthius trying to steal more weapons and armour for the suitors. On the orders of Odysseus, they bind him and string him up from the rafters, where he is mocked by Eumaeus.[7] When the battle is won, Telemachus (the son of Odysseus), Eumaeus, and Philoetius hang the twelve unfaithful maidservants, which include Melanthius's sister Melantho, before turning their attention to Melanthius. They take him to the inner court, chop off his nose and ears with a sword, pull off his genitals to feed to the dogs, and then, in their fury, chop off his hands and feet.[8]
Nicely done.
They're contemplating what they're saying to one another, and when they have something, after due contemplation, they'll let us know. The thrill is in the mystery of it. The gratification is in finally finding out at the end of the session what we've done (after Malloy signs off on it). And, what will we wear to the Capitol when the Budget is revealed in public? I'm going in my pale blue Prada couture gown with gold jewelry accents.
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Their public remarks were cordial, a tone not always struck since Malloy proposed deep cuts that have provoked opposition from Democrats and Republicans in the legislature.
“I think people are contemplating what I’m saying. I’m certainly contemplating what they’re saying. But we don’t have a deal or a budget put together that I would sign off on,” Malloy said.
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"It's always exciting," said Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, who had a large contingent of family with her, including relatives who flew in from Colorado. Dressed in a navy sequined dress, Merrill, in deference to her campaign color of teal, topped it with a teal sequined shrug.
Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman was also ready to party, dressed in a black, floor-length ruched sheath chosen by her husband, Michael.
Attorney General George Jepsen's wife, Diana, chose a champagne sequined gown for the evening while state Treasurer Denise Nappier was svelte and cold in a black jersey gown with a cutout at the neck.