“If you don’t know
where you are, how can you get to where you’re going? That’s why you’ve got to
take stock of yourself every so often” – a waitress to a customer in a
diner.
Q: You’re getting on in years; isn’t it time for some sort
of summing up?
A: I don’t see any pressing need.
Q: You’ve written a great deal about politics in
Connecticut…
A: … most of it lying dead in newspaper morgues…
Q: Maybe so, but a record has been established in Connecticut Commentary for
those who wish to consult it. Has anything changed because of your writing?
A: Do you mean for the better?
Q: Yes.
A: Well, obviously not. Just now, we are the laughing stock
of the nation. The Wall Street Journal lately has had great fun with our progressive
government, dominated for years by Democrats. One recent editorial begins, “Wailing
and lamentations broke out in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and
even as far away as Texas and Florida, as Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy
announced Thursday that he won’t seek a third term in 2018. Politicians in
these and other states are disappointed that Mr. Malloy’s policies won’t
continue indefinitely to be a source of jobs and taxpayers fleeing
Connecticut.” Other views from the right outside the state are similar, and no
more charitable. There seems to be wide agreement that we are a ruin and desolation.
Q: Are we?
A: That view is not unsupportable.
Q: How long have you been writing about politics in the
state?
A: Around 35 years, perhaps longer.
Q: And the state is a ruin and a wreck?
A: It’s not the happiest of times. Governor Dannel Malloy
has announced that he will resign and not continue torment us with his
ineptitude. Some take that as a sunny sign of good things to come, but there is
a vast difference between wishing well and well-being. Republicans have put
forward some ideas worth exploring. They have been out of power since I have
been writing. True, we’ve had two Republican governors and Lowell Weicker,
whose real affiliation has been, both as U.S. Senator and governor, with
Democrats.
Connecticut’s Indifferent Media
A: Weicker saved Connecticut’s obese state government the
necessity of losing weight – i.e. cutting spending. He did this by introducing
an income tax, and in so doing destroyed the state.
Q: We’ll get to him later. Here are the two questions for
this week: 1) Has your 35 years as an opinion journalist been useless? and 2)
If the answer to 1) is “Yes”, what keeps you going?
A: The categorical imperative of journalists, when
journalism mattered, used to be, “Comfort the afflicted, and afflict the
comfortable.” You can’t do that unless you have over the years managed to
cultivate a liberating “contrary” frame of mind.
Q: And the answer to the first question -- Has your 35 years
as an opinion journalist been useless? – would be what?
A: Well, I’m for low, necessary and sensible taxes, and we
have high and ruinous taxes. I’m for minimal and sensible regulations, and we
have a Gordian knot of regulations, few of which make any sense at all. I’m an
inflexible federalist who believes "that government governs best that governs
least " and is closest to the governed. I prefer, in other words, a government in
which every person governs himself, a government of fathers and mothers, to a
government of pestiferous neighbors, a government of neighborhoods to a
government of towns, a government of towns to a state government, and a
government of states to a federal regulatory octopus. In the United States, we
have a government that pushes governance and moral accountability up to the highest
rung. Neighborhoods cede their authority to towns, towns to the state, and the
state to the federal government – all of which makes a mockery of self-government.
So, I suppose in that sense, much of what I have written over the years has
fallen on stony ground. Had my views prevailed, the WSJ editorial cited above could
not have been written. The laughter at our expense would not be ringing,
annoyingly, in our ears.
Q: Two other questions: 1) Where did Connecticut begin to
slip? and 2) Does journalism in Connecticut afflict the afflicted?
A: The answer to number 2) is “No.” Taxpayers are afflicted
by unsupportable taxes; they have few champions among the state’s political
editorialists and commentators. Among the unaffiliated are lifer-politicians
such as U.S. Representatives John Larson in the 1st District and Rosa DeLauro
in the 3rd District, both gerrymandered Democratic sinecures. It
used to be said that safe politicians were politically impregnable unless they
had been found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy. I can’t imagine what kind
of scandal it might take to dislodge these two. The present US Congressional Delegation
is made up of all Democrats; all the constitutional offices in state are held
by Democrats; the General Assembly has been dominated by Democrats for the most
part of half a century; and, of course, Democrats, following the gubernatorial
election of Malloy, have been in command of the gubernatorial office for six
years, going on seven. I think it’s safe to say that Democrats in Connecticut
are both comfortable and unafflicted. So, the question arises: where are all
the Connecticut contrarian journalists who have pledged themselves to afflict
the comfortable? Lying, I should say, in cozy conformity with Democrats. There
are some few exceptions who stand out like green thumbs. But really,
considering the raucous laughter coming from the WSJ, is there no one in the
state’s journalistic community who has courage enough to point out the abysmal
failings of Democratic politicians and rise to defend the honor of the state by
insisting the bums should be thrown out of office? What flowerpots are the
brave Connecticut contrarians hiding behind?
Q: Well now, there are degrees of affliction, right? I think
we can agree that a young, black, African-American student who must dodge
bullets to arrive at an underperforming school in Hartford, deemed a few months ago the murder capital of
New England, is more afflicted,
certainly more uncomfortable, than Larson or DeLauro. What has the Republican
Party done for him?
A: The more important
question may be “What has the Democrat Party done to him?” It’s important
to pin the tail on the right donkey. Whatever is wrong in Hartford is wrong
because Democrats have been shaping the futures of young, black, African-American
boys in Connecticut’s larger cities for a much longer period of time than I’ve
been writing columns. And their future is much more storm-tossed than
Connecticut’s ship of state. Responsible politicians not in full flight from
their responsibilities- OWN the
inevitable consequences of their policies.
Weicker Saved
Government Ruined The State
Q: And the second question: When did things in Connecticut
start to go wrong?
A: Back to Weicker…
Q: …I figured you’d get there.
A: If we have to date the beginning of Connecticut’s
downslide, it would be 1991; that’s when Weicker bludgeoned an income tax
through the General Assembly. A couple of days after that measure passed, an
“Axe the Tax” rally, the largest assembly of its kind in state history, turned
out in front of the Capitol in Hartford.
Q: You’ve written that it was not the first time Connecticut
had passed an income tax.
A: That’s right. An income tax, revoked within days, was
passed during the administration of Tom Meskill, another Republican governor.
Q: Why the sneer?
A: Meskill was Republican in the same sense that Santa Claus
is Santa Claus; grownups know Santa is a pleasant fantasy for children. Weicker
also was a Republican in the same sense; his leftist Americans for Democratic
Action (ADA) rating during his last term in office was higher than that of U.S.
Senator Chris Dodd. In all but political affiliation, Weicker was a Democrat.
Weicker’s major domo, Tom D’Amore, who became chairman of the State Republican
Party at Weicker’s insistence, was an aide in the Meskill administration. The
Meskill income tax was quickly withdrawn, rather as if its passage had been a typo
-- oops, sorry about that! Weicker, of
course, had better luck as governor. To salt the income tax, a constitutional
cap on spending was added to it. A year ago, Attorney General George Jepsen,
who replaced consumer protection Attorney General Dick Blumenthal, now
occupying Dodd’s seat in the U.S. Congress, handed down an opinion – which, of course,
was correct – that the cap was unconstitutional. The General Assembly had never
supplied the necessary definitions to constitutionalize the cap. So the cap,
the lure that had led diffident legislators to vote in favor of the income tax
in 1991, was an inoperative fiction. The cap was never a bar to excessive
spending anyway. There is not a single barrier to temper spending in
Connecticut that has not been successfully stormed by the ruling party,
including dedicated lockbox funds regularly picked by revenue hungry
legislators.
Q: Weicker has surfaced recently. He commented on Malloy’s
decision not to run for a third term.
A: Right. Every so often, the father of Connecticut’ income
tax pokes his head above the foxhole, looks around for a friendly face and
spills some political beans. Ken Dixon of the Connecticut Post asked Weicker to comment on Malloy’s decision to pack it in, and he obliged.
What Weicker said was, as usual, confusing and contradictory. The decision not
to seek a third term, he said, “unties Malloy’s hands.” Of course, Malloy’s
hands were never tied during his entire administration; quite the contrary. All
the heights of power in Connecticut’s government – the governor’s office, the
General Assembly, all the state’s constitutional offices, the entire state U.S.
Congressional Delegation, important positions in the courts made by Malloy – have
rested securely in Democrats hands since Malloy had first been elected
governor. So untied were Malloy’s hands that he felt comfortable denying
Republican leaders in the General Assembly any voice in union contract
negotiations with SEBAC, the union conglomerate authorized to fashion contracts
with the governor. When budget deliberations began during Malloy’s first and
second terms, he shooed Republicans out of the budget negotiation rooms and gleefully
shut the door in their faces. One thinks of Cromwell marching into the British
Parliament and shouting,” Gentlemen, go home!”
Where are the “tied hands” in all this? Weicker then added
that, were he governor, “I would to the best of my ability deny the spending
spree in the legislature. We’ve got to stop spending. That’s our huge problem.
Every legislator has their pet project. We’re probably in the worst financial
condition of any state in the union, and we’re known for that, rather than
being the wealthiest.” And he finished by commending Malloy, whose approval
rating in Connecticut is among the lowest in the nation at about 28 percent: “Dan’s
had two terms, which is heavy-duty in Connecticut. I would say he still wants
to leave a positive legacy. I admire the man. I like him. He’s a good
governor.”
So let’s see: Malloy in 20 months will have been in office
for two terms; he is the author of both the largest and second largest tax
increases in Connecticut history, overmastering even Weicker on this score; the
Connecticut legislature, dominated by Democrats for a half century or more,
has, even by Weicker’s reckoning, spent the state into a hole; state deficits
are about what they were during Weicker’s first term in office – which,
everyone will recall, necessitated the imposition of an income tax; Connecticut
is “in the worst financial condition of
any state in the union” – and yet, yet, implausibly, “I admire the man. I like
him. He’s a good governor.” What work does the word “good” do in that sentence?
In Weicker's mind -- not that we need bother too much with
Weicker's mind -- spending is not a function of taxation, and taxation is not a
function of spending. That is why Weicker can say, both and at the same time:
a) spending is a problem; if I were governor today, I would put a stop to
spending, and b) Malloy, who has NOT done this, is never-the-less an admirable
governor. Malloy and Weicker have increased spending BECAUSE they increased
taxes. The two operations being unattached in Weicker's mind, Malloy is “good
governor” for the same reason Weicker was a good governor -- because Malloy
imitated Weicker. Psychologists call
this method of disassociation from reality something or other; I forget what.
Could it be creeping narcissism?
A Lack Of Will, Not Intelligence
Q: So where do we go from here?
A: We could take Weicker’s belated advice
and refrain from doing what both he and Malloy had done. Increasing revenue is
an invitation, rarely resisted by Democrats, to spend. The two are intimately, causally
connected. Repetitive deficits have not tempered Democrat’s default instinct
when they run the state into debt – increase revenue. Malloy’s most recent
budget increases state revenue. Pray God, lead us not into temptation. Connecticut
has now passed through the rabbit hole; we are in a strange land in which up is
down and right is left. Shall we take Hartford as an example?
Q: Sure, go ahead.
A: Hartford, Connecticut’s Capitol City, is a microcosm of
the state. Whatever is wrong in Hartford is wrong in the state; whatever is
right in Hartford is right in the state. Hartford has been a one-party town for
more than fifty years. The presence of the Republican Party in the city as a
political force is a shadow of a shadow, a whisper in the whirlwind.
Hartford’s Mayor, Luke Bronin, is Malloy’s former legal
counsel. Bronin replaced Hartford Mayor Pedro Segarra who, before leaving
office, gifted the incoming mayor with a financial mess and a new ballpark that
will be losing millions of dollars two years out from opening day. The school
system in Hartford, laboring under a court order that requires schools in the
city to maintain a “non-racist” ratio of 25 percent whites to 75 percent minorities,
is a continuing mess. A charter school in Hartford that provides to African
Americans and Hispanics an education that does not require remedial courses for
those of its students who graduate and go to college has been forced to turn
away African American and Hispanic students because it must preserve a 25-75
percent mixture of white and non-white students the court considers
constitutional.
The city derives its revenue from property taxes, but there
is a hitch: fifty percent of the property in Hartford cannot be taxed. When the
city wades into red ink, it makes an effort – only partly successful much of
the time – to reduce costs by reducing expenditures. In both the city and the
state, union givebacks have been insufficient to balance budgets without
additional revenue increases.
Here is Bronin’s dilemma in a nut shell: he cannot increase
taxes without incurring business flight and a consequent diminution of revenue,
and he cannot – dare not – institute permanent cuts in spending. Yet spending
continues to outpace revenue collection. So, both he and Malloy find themselves
in the same fix as Mr. Micawber in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield: “Annual
income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six,
result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds
nought and six, result misery."
Q: So how does a government separate itself from continuing
problems such as these?
A: By attacking the problems, by reforming government
processes. Politicians, especially those who are not answerable to an analytic
media, are geniuses at leaping over real but difficult solutions to problems
and boisterously putting forward the much easier right or wrong answers to the
wrong problems. It is state government that needs reform. If you don’t like the
end, you change the means. We have a legislature that is intent on reforming
everything but the legislature, a governor intent on reforming everything but
administrative problems, a judiciary, wandering far beyond constitutional
limits to pronounce unconstitutional everything but its own radical departure
from constitutional limits.
Connecticut is drowning in state employee pension
obligations. The amount the state owes to its employees is daunting, about --
depending upon who you ask -- $65 billion. Connecticut’s state pension system
was created 80 years ago. For the first 30 years, no money, not a penny, was
deposited in the dedicated fund. When waitresses working in diners hear that a
governor and a legislature wants to tax them and deposit the receipts into a
fund dedicated, let say, to improving highways, they laugh themselves silly. The
tax receipts put into the state employee pension fund this year are
considerably less than they were last year. Presently, only 35.5 percent of the
State Employees Retirement System is funded, the lowest percentage in the
nation. So, we have an under-financed fund that any accountant worth his salt
would consider kaput. And this problem – the obvious inability of the governor
and General Assembly to correct the problem -- is crowding out necessary
financing for legitimate state functions. The more you spend on A, the less you
have to spend on B. Solution: provide some relief to taxpayers and those in
government who want to discharge their obligations by – changing the funding for
new hires from a defined benefit to a defined contribution plan. If you stop
the runaway train, you can clean up the mess left in its wake. But if the train
continues to roar through the towns, the mess is multiplied and the chance of a
clean-up becomes more and more remote. In time, people become used to runaway trains
plowing through their towns. I would guess there is not a single legislator who
has spent more than two years in the General Assembly who does not know a) that
this is a problem, and b) that a real solution lies to hand. The Yankee Institute has put forward a five point plan to pull teacher pensions from the fire.
- Require additional reporting on the
system’s risks to improve transparency.
- Increase teacher contribution rates to
the national average of 8% (up from 6%).
- Eliminate or reduce cost of living
adjustments.
- Include new teachers in Social
Security.
- Require defined contribution or hybrid
plans for new teachers to increase portability and reduce taxpayer risk.
This is not rocket
science. The difficulty has nothing to do with a lack of intelligence – the political
will is wanting.
Q: But if the solution is that obvious, why is nothing done?
A: By confronting a real problem with real solutions in this
particular instance, the General Assembly must confront a powerful special
interest – teachers’ unions. Politically, that would be dreadfully inconvenient
for them. The worm in the apple is progressive partisan politics and special
interests – the unwillingness of individual politicians to advance the general
welfare. Laws should be general in scope, not particular, and they should
benefit the general public, not special interests. A law or a process or a rule
of state that advances a particular interest – say, the interest of a
particular union or the interest of a particular business, should be considered
inimical to democracy. An appellate judge who snatches out of pure air a
“constitutional” provision he has himself spun out of whole cloth should be
forced from the bench. The last appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court became a
manner of life or death for partisan politicians. Why? Because judicial
decisions now determine the drift and substance of politics. One of the
Federalist authors tells us that no Supreme Court justice could ever be more
powerful than the governor of New York – because the constitution itself
assigns legislative decisions to a more authoritative and democratic department
of government, the legislative branch. Really? In our day, the Supreme and
appellate courts are daily used to overthrow decisions made by state governors
and legislatures. The death penalty in Connecticut was overthrown by the
state’s high court because it was inconsistent with current opinion on the death
penalty – months after state legislators had voted to end the death penalty
except in the case of eleven death row prisoners who had been convicted and
sentenced by multiple juries of truly heinous crimes. So, who in a
representative republic is better able to reflect count opinion on the death
penalty – juries and legislators, or high court judges? This is why court
appointments have become shuttlecocks in the great game of politics.
Q: Will Hartford go bankrupt? Will the state go bankrupt?
A: Hartford may go bankrupt; there are those who think it
should declare bankruptcy because politics in the city has become so entangled
with partisan government and special interests it is no longer capable of
governing in the public’s interests. States cannot declare bankruptcy, which
means there is but one solution to the states seeming intractable problems –
throw the bums out.
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