Now that Democrats
have reclaimed the castle from marauding Republicans, State Senator Martin
Looney is flexing his considerable muscles. Looney is the President Pro Tem of
the State Senate and, as such, is one of two important gatekeepers steering
bills through the legislature; the other is Speaker of the State House of
Representatives Joe Aresimowicz, quite literally bought by unions. Aresimowicz
is education coordinator employed by AFSCME.
Looney’s political
turf is Half of New Haven, which last saw a Republican mayor 68 years ago, and
Hamden, politically a vassal of New Haven, home of Yale College. Looney has
been in politics for a quarter century, and his tenure has taught him a thing
or two. Both Looney and Aresimowicz are progressives very much in the mold of
Presidential contender Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, socialist presidential
contender Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the new face
of Democrat socialism, a US Representative from New York's 14th congressional
district, which includes the eastern
part of The Bronx and portions of
north-central Queens in New York City.
The modern American
progressive, like his French counterparts, believes in “Liberte,
Egalite, Fraternite" and is willing to roll out the tumbrils to achieve his
aims. First seize political power, permanently destroy the ruling elite,
declare war on supportive institutions such as the church and non-fraternal
courts, redistribute wealth and herald the glories of revolution. In Looney’s
New Haven, some of these aims have yet to be accomplished. Not quite as
courageous as Warren,
the Leon Trotsky of the new progressive movement in the United States, Looney has yet to fix his attention on the rather
vast assents of Yale College. Perhaps it has not yet occurred to him that
Yale’s obscene assets, about $6.3 billion, may be expropriated and shipped off
to New Haven’s poorer public schools.
Looney has proposed
the forced consolidation of school districts in Connecticut, ostensibly to save
money and do away with needless duplication of services and personnel such as
elected school boards. A probate court map gives present town boards of
education some indication of what Looney’s redrawn school districts might look
like. The attempt to redraw the educational district map is an attempt to reap
the benefits of county government without the trouble of having county
government. Connecticut still is divided geographically into eight counties,
but no government structure is associated with the counties. The
Connecticut General Assembly abolished county government in 1960
because legislators found a county government overlay on municipal government
needlessly redundant.
The administrative
arm of Looney’s new educational recombination will be the state of Connecticut,
now laboring under a pension liability of some $127.7 billion, which amounts to
$35,721 per person in the state, the second highest per capita debt in the
nation. Yet before leaving office, the democratic tone deaf Governor
Dannel Malloy, whose approval
rating upon egress was 25 percent, advised “Communities could help themselves
by doing more things together that they do individually. I wish municipalities
became as efficient as our state government has become.” Yup, he actually said
that.
Looney apparently
agrees. But as a matter of fact, municipalities, putting aside the state’s
larger Democrat dominated cities, have run their governments far more
efficiently than the state. Faced with deficits, municipalities strive to cut
costs, and when municipal politicians raise taxes beyond the tolerance limits
of the town’s taxpayers, they are voted out of office. The same is not true of
the lockbox-breaking members of the state’s General Assembly who are forever
confusing the general economic health of the people of Connecticut with the unappeasable
hunger on the part of state officials for ever increasing taxation and
regulation.
Connecticut relies
for its school funding from three resources: roughly -- federal funds supply
10%, municipal funds 45% and state funds 45%. If school districts currently
governed by municipalities are combined, some entity must distribute the funds.
In the absence of an additional electable governing entity corresponding to the
redrawn districts such as county government, that would be the state. So, if
Looney has his way, money will flow from responsive and democratic
municipalities to an irresponsible, autocratic, one party state, which then
will distribute it to the redrawn school districts.
For all practical
purposes, the Looney reform will mean the end of municipal control over school
operations and school funding. Spendthrift General Assembly Democrats need to
grab municipal cash to finance the increased spending that undoubtedly will recur
now that Democrats control by wide margins the General Assembly, the Governor's Office and Malloy appointed Superior and State Supreme Court Justices. Under
Looney’s scheme, local control of education will be effectively abolished
because -- whoever controls the purse strings also controls the operational
strings. That would be the new Looney, Lamont and Aresimowicz triumvirate.
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