Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

In case anyone has not noticed, we are in the midst of a Nietzschean transvaluation of all values epoch.  Last week, the United States Supreme Court raised the roof on marriage to accommodate gays, striking down with one bold stroke state laws governing marriage that the justices and the editorial board of the New York Times thought primitive and unnecessary. Gov. Dannel Malloy, WFSB reported , “called the decision historic and had a LGBT pride flag flying at the Governor's Residence in Hartford on Friday. ‘This is a historic moment, and we should recognize and celebrate its significance. Equality, freedom, justice and liberty – all recognized by the Supreme Court in this ruling that moves our nation forward,’ Mr. Malloy said.” His administration, Mr. Malloy has said previously, is the gayest in state history and has been full of historic moments.

A few Days ago, Greece collapsed under a load of debt regularly passed forward by spendthrift and cowardly politicians to future bill-payers. Now at the mercy of international loan sharks, the final comeuppance will not be pretty. Among all the states in the United States, Connecticut most closely resembles Greece at the tipping point. Consider: The state is groaning under a load of pension debt, about $44 billion, that hangs by a slender thread over its head like a Damoclean sword. Fearful – but not too fearful – of hiking taxes to absorb repeated spending shocks, Connecticut’s progressive government has resorted to other tricks of the budget trade to discharge its debt.

A few weeks ago, Democrats and their sounding boards in the increasingly irrelevant media fired a shot across Republican Presidential candidate Mario Rubio’s “yacht,” hoping to sink his candidacy. It turned out the yacht was a fishing boat; but, no matter, Democrats had made a point. Republicans are rich – therefore insensitive to the vast yachtless middle class. Republican candidate for Governor Tom Foley suffered the same scrutiny -- with this difference: Foley really was rich, and his yacht did not resemble the creaky boats used by Mr. Rubio’s Cuban forbearers to escape the remorseless tyranny of the Castro brothers, both communists who long ago had declared war on yacht owners and political opponents and gays and others who opposed their brutal autocratic regime. Fidel Castro had a yacht. (See the picture above showing uber-rich Lowell Weicker canoodling with Fidel on his yacht.) Mr. Weicker, Maverick U.S. Senator and Governor of Connecticut, also had a yacht. The Castro ...

The romance between Fred Carstensen of the Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis (CCEA) at UConn and the administration of Governor Dannel Malloy suffered a setback when Mr. Carstensen discovered that new data supplied by the federal government indicates a slowdown in business activity. For reasons that are not clear, the dip in job growth in Connecticut surprised Mr. Carstensen, the Candide of economic analysts in the northeast.

The two most abhorrent but inescapable duties of politicians are: 1) selling themselves or their states to prospective investors, and 2) raising money for political campaigns. Connecticut politicians who do not like dunking for dollars hope to relieve themselves of the second chore through the public financing of campaigns. Whether or not the first is a disagreeable chore depends upon the individual politician and the condition of his product.

Progressives have for some time been in the habit of calling tax receipts “investments.” Governor Dannel Malloy, who has proposed a thirty year, one hundred billion investment in infrastructure repair, is Connecticut’s chief investment broker. The term is borrowed from Wall Street and glows with the promise of a handsome return on the investment. Naturally, the over-hyped return usually is slender; the bulk of investments in education, for instance, are absorbed in salary and benefit payments to teachers and administrators. When a government taxes its citizenry and invests the tax revenue in various projects, it is moving a bucket of money from the deep end of the pool and dumpling it into the shallow end of the pool. The drawing and dumping, it should be noted, does not raise the water level in the pool. The pool, in other words, is no richer in water after the getting and spending transactions have been completed. Government, despite what most people have been told, is not a wealt...

Toscanini said of Marian Anderson, “A voice like this comes but once in a hundred years.”  Her personal history is probably the most uplifting story of self-liberation in a hundred years. First she went to Europe to perfect her art  -- then she returned to conquer America. When she sang "My Country Tis Of Thee" from the Lincoln Memorial, breaking back of unthinking intolerance, she did so with the iron rod of beauty. And her life represents the triumph of a patient righteousness over intemperate hatred. So then, here she is, and if the reader will meet her patience with his own, he will begin to understand why the hand of God brushed her lips as she sang. Just listen to her sing Shubert's "Ave Maria"and "They Crucified My Lord." This is where the search for beauty leads -- to he heart of light and love.

Just as a good safe-cracker can crack the safest safe, so can a good lawyer crack the most forbidding of laws, which is why, come to think of it, good politicians bulk up on lawyers whenever they slip on banana peels. Politicians who are also lawyers sometimes find it less expensive to cut out the middleman. Then again, one always has to be careful: A fool has himself as a lawyer. For the sake of clarity, it must be mentioned here that the word “good” as used above is not intended as an ethical descriptor but rather as an indicator of legal ability. Democratic State Central Committee's lawyer David Golub (see below) is a “good” lawyer; that is, he is able to exploit a twist in the law to benefit his client.

J, To Dust Thou Shalt Return It was a stroke of luck, or the hand of Providence, that forced you to move from Connecticut to South Carolina. For more than twenty years, you have been out of the way of Connecticut’s inexorable getting-and-spending steam roller. Distance may not make the heart grow fonder, but it does prevent the spirit from being mauled by current events. Here in your former home state, where you reared your family, we are all pretty much clawed by an administrative machine that is at once both solicitous and rapacious.

The Malloy-Sharkey-Looney budget was hammered out behind closed doors by the three gentlemen just before Governor Dannel Malloy was to begin a European trip, ostensibly to convince businesses in Europe to transfer some of their operations to tax-plagued Connecticut. Paris and Germany were on the itinerary. Paris is lovely this time of year. Many moons ago, when  François Hollande was installed as President, the famous French actor Gérard Depardieu turned in his passport and moved to a small Belgian village about 24 miles from France, leaving behind as he went his malison on M. Hollande, the first socialist President since François Mitterrand  left office in 1995.  The richest man in the country, Bernard Arnault, the CEO and chief shareholder of the luxury behemoth LVMH, had earlier moved to Belgium to escape the confiscatory tax Mr. Hollande levied on France’s One-Percenters.

Governor Dannel Malloy, Democratic Party Bigwigs in Connecticut and the members of the state’s all-Democratic US Congressional Delegation are, at long last, in for Hillary Clinton as their Party’s presidential nominee. For weeks, the Democratic crowd had been indifferently plunging their big toes in the nomination pool. Now, in unison, all have jumped in, satisfied that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a fire breathing progressive, has earnestly decided to withdraw behind the nomination curtain. Fresh from having indicated he would not veto a progressive state budget that effectively violates every important promise he made on the gubernatorial campaign stump – no tax increases, no red ink budgets, no untoward budget gimmickry, and the like – Mr. Malloy now has found time to issue a generic endorsement of Hillary Benghazi.

Governor Dannel Malloy, a righteous dragon, entered office in 2011 shooting flames out of his nostrils. Previous laggard Republican governors, ne’er-do-wells in Mr. Malloy’s considered judgment, had resorted to budget alchemy to balance their books. He would fix that: Open government, balanced budgets and an absence of the usual end of the fiscal year chicanery would usher in a long hoped for prosperity. And, oh yes, having in his first budget imposed on Connecticut one of the largest tax increase in state history, there would be no tax increases in Mr. Malloy’s second term. You can take that to the bank.

The following document was sent to me by someone who wishes Connecticut State Senator Joe Markley the best in his pursuit of the chairmanship of the Republican Party. Mr. Markley’s name has been in circulation for several weeks. Connecticut Commentary, while it does not endorse candidates, sees a good deal of merit in Mr. Markley’s bid. He is a masterful organizer, a thoughtful and principled politician. As a bonus, Mr. Markley is one of the few legislators in the General Assembly who can make a speech, sometimes studded with literary references, that bears repeating. The communication below – designed to outline some of Mr. Markley’s proposals for the  reification of a political party that now has been marginalized by progressives in the General Assembly with knives in their brains, assisted as ever by Governor Dannel “The Porcupine” Malloy – is clear and eminently readable. It would be redundant to outline the outline here. Connecticut Commentary wishes to say only that it ...

"All this was indispensably necessary," replied the one-eyed doctor, "for private misfortunes are public benefits; so that the more private misfortunes there are, the greater is the general good" -- Candide, by Voltaire   Before progressive extremists in Connecticut’s General Assembly succeed in passing the second highest tax increase in state history, which followed by a few short years the highest tax increase in state history, warning flags were waving at them from every corner of the state. Three of the state’s largest companies – Aetna, Travelers and General Electric – offered demurrals on the budget that were airily dismissed by ardent progressives.

Connecticut needs a mini-revolution. A state budget, like a federal budget, is the single most important piece of legislation produced in any fiscal year.  The reason for this is obvious: A budget is an appropriation and expenditure engine for a getting and spending vehicle that drives us into the future. It also is a destiny map. Without the engine, the car does not move.  Precisely because a budget is central to the welfare of the state, all the representative organs of the state should participate in its formation.

Some commentators, "Morning Joe" among them, may have missed the snarling irony of the moment. Governor Dannel Malloy, a frequent guest on "Morning Joe," will soon approve the Democratic Party budget, the most progressive budget in state history and Connecticut’s second most expensive budget in state history. Mr. Malloy’s first budget, launched at a time when his state was caught in the toils of a malingering recession, was a tad more expensive. In passing, one may note that Connecticut, unlike all the other states in the union, still has not recovered the jobs lost in the crippling Bush/Obama recession. Is it not possible that businesses in and outside the state are reacting to Connecticut’s counterproductive progressive economic policies? Three of the state’s largest job providers – Travelers, Aetna and General Electric – seem to think so.

 Mother Aetna Heaves A Sigh Connecticut’s House on Monday withdrew its tax infused budget shortly after three large companies – Aetna, General Electric and Travelers– hinted ever so gently they might move some operations out of state if lawmakers did not reconsider the Malloy-Sharkey-Looney budget. Reconsideration followed almost immediately, as legislators knees began to buckle.

Connecticut’s budget, though not yet set in stone was hammered out Sunday, on the last Day of May, following a closed door meeting between Governor Dannel Malloy and Democratic General Assembly leaders Senate President Pro Tem Martin Looney and House Speaker Brendan Sharkey. A handshake between the three on the budget signals strongly there will be no veto. Republicans, as usual, were crowded out of the deliberations by Mr. Malloy , the new Chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. In a one-party progressive state, bi-party inclusion is a political mistake.