Ned Lamont, the Democrat Party’s certified
candidate for governor, having run the nomination knout, is now proceeding to
run primary election bases.
NBC Connecticut has noted a pronounced difference in
messaging: Lamont Distances from Malloy at Technology Forum.
Governor Malloy has relied on targeted tax reductions and tax
grants to persuade companies to remain in Connecticut and avoid migrating to
other states in order to escape the governor’s burdensome taxes and the
Democrat dominated General Assembly’s noxious regulations.
"I think we've
gone snap happy in terms of trying get and keep businesses,” Lamont said at a
forum hosted by the Connecticut Technology Council. Lamont told the group he
was not interested in providing bailouts to Connecticut’s tax starved cities: "I'm
not interested in bailouts, I didn't like that deal at all, but there have to
be other ways to help our cities,” which are, never-the-less, critical to the
growth of the state.
“This version of Ned
Lamont” the report pointedly notes, “is new on the campaign trail. Before the
Democratic State Convention last month in Hartford, he seldom ever mentioned
policies or moments of the political past, insisting on looking forward and
having a message to reflect that effort.” Right, for politicians uncomfortable
with offering rational solutions to pressing problems, glittering talk about a
mythical future is the last refuge of scoundrels.
Unless sound
measures are adopted to rein in spending, clip the power of unions to shape
budgets, address Connecticut’s ruinous pension liabilities, reduce taxes as an incentive to lure
companies from surrounding states – Massachusetts, formerly called
Taxachusetts, led by a Republican governor, is eating Connecticut’s lunch –
strip away burdensome regulations and offer some hope to entrepreneurial talent
in the state inexorably gravitating towards greener pastures in low
governmental impact states, Connecticut’s future will remain bleak. And
everyone who is not a wall-eyed optimist or a Panglossian politician knows it
-- especially intelligent voters weary of the usual glittering propaganda of
politicians on the make.
The politically barbed
question Lamont will be asked once he enters debates with his Republican
counterpart is: Can he reverse the direction set by Malloy, the nominal head of
the Democrat Party, and deliver prosperity?
That question is a slightly
different one than asking Lamont, in one form or another, to denounce Malloy. Denunciation
will come more easily to Republicans than Democrats, because Malloy’s operative
principle -- Connecticut is not suffering from a spending problem; it is
suffering from a revenue problem, the solution for which is tax increases – is
the battle flag of the modern progressive movement.
Connecticut’s
progressives go to bed dreaming, and they wake up dreaming. If only Connecticut were better able to
identify sources of wealth and tax them properly, the state will revive. What
Connecticut desperately needs is a heavy progressive tax on hedge fund managers
huddled together in Connecticut’s Gold Coast. The state must spend more on
early childhood education, listen with a learning ear to the lights of the progressive
National Democrat Party, Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and uber-progressive demagogue
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, rebuild the state’s infrastructure
with congestion tolling, invest in solar and wind energy, increase the minimum
wage, make all schools in Connecticut gun-free zones, open more sanctuary cities -- impeach
President Donald Trump! Ah, if these things were done, then Connecticut would
rise in splendor from its ashes and once again become the progressive pearl in
New England’s crown. Such is the dream progressives dream.
“I think we do need
to bring our revenue structure into the 21st century and when it comes to
transportation,” Lamont told the techies at the Trumbull Marriott. “I need a
more reliable and predictable revenue stream that we can leverage and make the
investments we need, and I think that starts with electronic tolling on some of
our biggest trucks that are coming in from out of state using our roads, tax
free, creating tons of maintenance issues and we’ll see where it goes from
there.(emphasis mine)”
Aye… starts with
taxing the guy behind the tree, out of state truck drivers, and ends with yet
another broad-based middle class tax on working people; this in addition to the Lowell
Weicker/Eunice Groark income tax and Malloy's two massive tax increases, the
largest and the second largest in state history. And we know where tax increases go -- mostly to satisfy special interest groups that regularly vote Democrat.These accumulative tax increases have
boosted spending in Connecticut threefold since former Governor William O’Neill
took a hike in 1991, having been replaced by the father of Connecticut’s income
tax.
For decades, the
message of Connecticut’s government to the state’s diminishing wealth pots,
including its techies, has been – if you have wealth, run. And they ran; they
are running still. Connecticut is bleeding wealth, and its wounds will not be
cauterized by increasing taxes. Only permanent, long-term reductions in
spending will do the trick.
Techies take note: Connecticut
has become the entrepreneurial graveyard of New England. The only dreams that
live here are those of its progressive tax obsessed politicians.
Comments