Q: I have lots of questions.
A: I’m sure I do not have lots of answers.
Q: I’ll ask the questions anyway.
A: You always were persistent, an indispensable virtue among
good reporters.
Q: You were a reporter once, right?.
A: No, a columnist. Reporters dig up the truffles,
columnists make use of them in their pâtés.
Q: When did you start publishing Connecticut Commentary?
A: About 2004, thirteen years after then Governor Lowell
Weicker destroyed the character of Connecticut, once a magnet for companies
seeking to escape the withering hand of autocratic government, by instituting
his ill-advised income tax.
Q: And you were writing columns back then as well.
A: Before then. I’ve been fulminating for more than 35
years. The income tax, a new revenue stream saved the Democrat dominated
General Assembly the necessity of pruning back spending over the long term. It
resulted in a catastrophic, uninterrupted increase in spending, the efficient
cause of the recurring budget deficits from which we suffer today. State
employee labor costs in Connecticut are punishing. Instate businesses have
their eyes on the exit signs, and out-of-state businesses now treat Connecticut
as if it had the pox.
Q: As a cynic, a follower of Antisthenes, you
believe there is no hope.
A: Well, not exactly. A political cynic is someone who believes
that the path to Hell is strewn with false hopes. If your expenditures exceed
your revenue, you are in the condition of Mr. Micawber, a Charles Dickens character in David Copperfield: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure
nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and
six, result misery."
Just now, Connecticut’s Governor Elect, Ned Lamont, is looking for a new
revenue stream, and he appears to have found one in prospective tolls. We are
told he met with Weicker to query how Weicker had pushed the income tax through
a resistant General Assembly.
Q: And, having written for Connecticut papers for 40 years,
well before Weicker became governor, you know how that happened.
A: Yes. Weicker pushed and shoved and offered tidbits to
this or that politician, the usual polite bribery, then he vetoed three non-income tax balanced budgets
presented to him by the General Assembly. The New York Times was obliged to cover the event on
August 2, 1991. “Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. ,” the Times wrote, “vetoed a budget for the third time today,
but in a scornful veto message he offered legislators no clear options except
to override it or give up their opposition to an income tax. 'The whole
Coalition III is a gimmick,' he [Weicker] said, referring to the name
given to the third budget without an income tax passed by a coalition of
Republicans and Democrats. 'Actually, gimmick is the kind word for what is
the shame and scandal of our generation.'"
But of course – it was a shame and scandal to oppose the
suicidal dictate of a puffed up neo-Republican. Prophetically, the Times noted,
“Connecticut accumulated a $937 million deficit in the last fiscal year as
spending continued to increase while the recession ate away at sales-tax and
corporate-profits tax revenues. What has been clear for months is that a
billion dollars in new and replacement revenues had to be found, in any budget,
to avoid a similar deficit this fiscal year.”
Spending then and now is the culprit. And Weicker knew this.
Asked if he intended to propose an income tax during his campaign as an
Independent, Weicker forswore the tax. Implementing tax increases during a
recession, he said, would be “like pouring gas on a fire.” It was clear that a
majority in the state did not want an income tax. Bill Cibes, whom Weicker
taped to head his Office of Policy Management, had run for governor on an
income tax platform and had been soundly defeated. A majority of legislators
did not want an income tax and voted for a non-income tax budget three months
in a row. The income tax, when passed, was the occasion of the largest anti-tax rally in
the nation.
Weicker got his tax – and we are left sifting the ruins.
Following the third veto, Weicker appealed to the better natures of resistant
politicians: With an income tax, they would not have to struggle with recurring
budget deficits year after year. This prediction has fallen far short of
expectations. The last pre-income tax budget under Governor Bill O’Neill cost taxpayers $7.5 billion. The cost
of government four governors later tripled, and the budget deficit doubled, not
an unmitigated success.
I recall, several years ago, attending a conference at which
Weicker was present as a panelist. Someone mentioned the acceleration of
spending and the appearance of recurring deficits, at which Weicker’s drooped
like a water deprived flower, and he wondered aloud, “Where did it all go?”
Immediately after the imposition of the tax, the state had realized budget
surpluses for a bit. A businessman sitting next to me, not yet a cynic, mumbled,
not quite to himself, “They spent it all, you ninny.” That man today is likely a
cynic. Or perhaps his business has moved out of state, re-watering his parched hopes.
History is not a mystery. We know what has happened in Connecticut and are
fully aware of the consequences of stupid decisions. The only question is: Are
we insane in Einstein’s sense?
Q: Incidentally, it was not Einstein who said “insanity is
repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.” The quote first
appeared in 1981 in a Narcotics Anonymous document warning its members that continuing
to use narcotic drugs and expecting to be able to stop on their own was mad folly.
A: Even more appropriate. Narcissistic behavior is
a narcotic. Taken to an extreme, solipsism may be fatal to everyone but the
solipsist.
Q: I think you would agree that Lamont is not a solipsist.
A: Not yet. Power corrupts, they say. And Lincoln said, “Nearly
all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.” Some men adapt to the
usufructs of power positions more quickly than others. The founders of the
Republic may have thought they had created a system of government that would
allow for a healthy turnover in legislators. Connecticut’s own Roger Sherman,
the only early forefather who signed all four foundational documents – the Continental Association , the Declaration of Independence,
the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution -- held at least four
different political positions before he died: Justice of the Superior Court of
Connecticut from 1766 to 1789, treasurer of Yale
College, professor of religion for many years, Mayor of New Haven from 1784 until his death in
1793. U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro leapt from college directly into
politics and has clung to her position as “U.S. Rep. for life” since 1991 -- 27
years. And she is the rule, not the exception. Most members of Connecticut’s
U.S. Congressional Delegation are well on their way to life sinecures.
Q: I sense a turn in the discussion towards term limits.
A: I can oblige. Progressive
politicians like DeLauro want change in everything but their own careers. I would
hazard a guess that many of DeLauro’s constituents have suffered a number of
changes in their work environments since they were first employed. It took 20
years and a crane to lift Attorney General Dick Blumenthal into the U.S.
Senate. Unfortunately, he has carried none of his virtues and all of his bad
habits into the new office with him.
Q: So, from your point of view, the election of Ned Lamont
as governor seems like déjà vu all
over again?
A: Republicans in the General Assembly might be forgiven for
viewing it as a giant step backwards. They had made impressive gains in both
houses of the General Assembly. The Senate had been tied 18-18, and Republicans
were only a few seat from a tie in the House. This election returns the General
Assembly back to Malloy’s ascendancy. Democrats now command all the
Constitutional offices, the entire U.S. Congressional Delegation and the governor’s
office, as complete a sweep as any hegemonic Democrat could desire.
Q: And the future is bleak?
A: If it resembles the past, yup.
Q: Will it?
A: I’ve been asked that very question numberless times by
disappointed Republicans, joyous Democrats and bewildered non-affiliateds.
Q: And the answer is?
A: Possibly the only politician in the state who can save
Connecticut from a fate worse than déjà vu all over again is Lamont, and he will have to buck his own party to do
it. So, the answer to your question is the usual journalistic one: We’ll see.
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