“Government… is force”
George Washington
At least one Connecticut Journalist, Kevin Rennie in the
Hartford Courant, believes that Governor Ned Lamont’s poorly concealed campaign
lies concerning truck-only tolls will haunt him during his entire term or terms,
as the case may be, in office.
“This [the campaign flip-flop] raises some long-term worries,”
Rennie writes, “about Lamont’s
ability to lead. Lamont may have surrounded himself with people who do not
understand that the public sees campaign promises as something more than
gossamer thoughts. Just as troubling is the prospect that there is no one
around the Greenwich millionaire who could persuade him that abandoning a key
campaign promise 38 days into his administration would inflict lasting damage
on him. He will no longer be believed — a crippling wound for any governor.”
The public also will be wounded daily by Lamont’s large cache
of revenue extenders. The broadening of the tax base is Lamont’s biggest Big
Stick. It is likely that Lamont’s revenue enhancements may haul into the state
treasury more funds than his predecessor’s two massive tax increases.
Unfortunately, that stick belabors tax payers rather than tax consumers, and
the Lamont administration has yet to propose equivalent, long term, permanent
cost savings.
Lamont has proposed eliminating a whole series of “tax
exemptions.” These “revenue enhancements” -- itself an expression that reeks of
political back room dealing -- shine a revealing light on one of the principal suppositions of the progressive ideology. The progressive in heat supposes that
all earnings, salaries and profits BELONG by right to the state which,
magnanimously and most often for political rather than economic reasons, grants
exceptions to its insatiable appetite for more and more revenue. A state tax,
properly speaking, is any dollar that moves from a private wallet into state
treasuries. Taxes are not made less taxing when different names – revenue
enhancers or the elimination of tax credits – are attached to them. The net
result of Lamont’s effort remains the same as that of former Governor Dannel
Malloy. Money that might be used to
create real wealth is moved into state treasuries and progressively disbursed
to consumers of special political favors such as state employee unions that
have a bewitching, outsized influence over progressive leaders in the General
Assembly, among them President Pro Tem of the Senate Martin Looney and
union-employed Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz.
The legislature’s education committee recently held a public hearing on the regionalization of schools. The expression most often used by majority
Democrats on the committee and pro-regionalists in the Lamont administration
was the old “carrot and stick” canard. The Lamont administration, we are to
understand, much prefers carrots to sticks: incentives will be offered to municipalities
that agree to consolidate administrative processes.
The “carrot” is, of course, monetary remuneration to
municipalities. But the carrot becomes a sick when the municipalities do not
jump through the regionalization hoop – at which point state education aid will be withheld. This is as it must be. Every civic duty is necessarily
supported by a sanction. No one has ever improved on George Washington’s
definition of government. “Government is not reason,” Washington is reputed to
have said. “It is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant
and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible
action.”
Because government is force, it should be deployed
sparingly, wisely, with a view to hurtful consequences. The carrot-stick can be
a lethal weapon when deployed wrongly. Forced regionalization – of course
it will be forced – brought to the legislative office building three
overflow rooms of people for very good reasons.
There are in Connecticut good and bad schools; we wish to encourage
the former and discourage the latter. A
policy that did so would be a boon to the general public, not to mention school
children in the state. But the carrot-stick offered by the Lamont
administration will do little to improve failing schools or support successful
schools. The Lamont effort is not aimed at improving school performance; it does
not reward quality schools by providing additional aid or sanction poor
performing schools by withdrawing aid.
Even former Governor Dannel Malloy showed some interest in improving
the quality of education in Connecticut. Both Malloy and his erstwhile education
reforms, Connecticut
Commentary noted at the time, were clubbed like baby seals by the usual
suspects. But Malloy tried; both his heart and his will were in the right
place.
The Lamont supported school redistricting effort is at bottom
a money moving device that a) allows the state to make educational spending
more progressive at the distribution end by directing scarce financial resources from high
performing schools to lower performing schools, and b) artfully clothes the
effort as a measure to save the state money. This last laudable goal is to be
entrusted to an administration that, some claim, will increase state revenue in
an amount greater than Malloy’s two massive tax increases.
Is it fanciful to imagine people in the overflow rooms
praying on their knees for the failure of forced regionalization?
Comments