Excessive Taxation Kills Liberty and Enterprise
Surely no one is surprised that Governor Lamont has thrown his support to a trucks-only toll bill.
Connecticut, according to a handful of media critics of the
measure, needs a new source of revenue, pretty much for the same reason the
prodigal’s son needed more dough from his dad. He overspent, drew down his
allowance and took on debt, the way a sinking ship takes on water through a
hole in its hull. If dad can absorb the debt, there is no problem; he can
in that case, quite literally, afford to be merciful. But if he himself has
fallen on hard times, mercy comes at too dear a price. Connecticut is the
prodigal’s father who has fallen on hard times.
The author of the new transportation initiative, we are
given to understand from various news sources, is Senate President Martin
Looney, who seemed, only a short time ago, to have wrinkled his nose at the
toll proposals then on the table for discussion, one of which was a trucks-only
tolling scheme.
Democrats are now agreed that a new revenue stream is
necessary and that Lamont’s roll-out was defective. During his gubernatorial
campaign, Lamont proposed truck only tolling; once elected, he proposed
multiple gantries on major highways, about 58 gantries that would collect user
fees from all road travelers. The new revenue source is necessary, Democrats
continue to argue, because the Transportation Fund lock-box has been depleted –
by legislators who, as it turns out, had diverted funds destined for the
lock-box, dumping them into the General Fund so they might reduce the continuing budget
deficits for which they absurdly do not claim responsibility.
This analysis barely scratches the surface, though it does point
to the real problem. The real problem is that the ruling Democrat Party is
disinclined to make long-term, permanent cuts in spending. Additional taxes, we
all know, are always permanent and long term. If you raise taxes, you eliminate
the disturbing need to cut spending. Additional ruinous taxation, at this point in Connecticut's descent into its three decades old death spiral, will help only politicians -- no one else.
Why are Democrats so averse to permanent, long-term cuts in
spending?
They are operating, as we all do, on a pleasure-pain
principle. All life on the planet tends to resist pain and welcome pleasure.
Even a daisy raising its head to greet the morning sun operates on the
pleasure-pain principle. So then, we should ask ourselves: which is more
painful for the average Democrat legislator, incurring the displeasure of the
many supportive special interests in his political universe, or incurring the
much more defused displeasure of those people he claims to represent who will
be adversely impacted by yet another tax?
Democrat legislators are supposed to represent the general good
of the whole demos, not special interests such as state worker unions. That is
the desideratum we find in textbooks on
good government. If Connecticut could produce a Machiavelli and put him to work
churning out editorials for most newspapers in the state, we should soon have a
proper view of modern state politics.
Chris Powell at the Journal Inquirer occasionally quotes Ambrose Bierce
on this point. Bierce defined “politics” in his “Devil’s Dictionary as: “a strife
of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public
affairs for private advantage.”
If that seems cynical, it is. But perhaps the state could
use a strong dose of cynicism, purely as an emetic. In the golden age of
Athenian democracy, cynics were the world’s first hippies: They questioned all
authority. It may seem cynical to say so, but a questioning and contrarian
posture is proper to good journalism. In
fact, it is indispensable to good journalism. How, without a touch of cynicism,
should journalists go about comforting the afflicted and afflicting the
comfortable? Journalism’s most deadly enemy is auto-pilot thoughtlessness and
political sycophancy. There was a heroic journalist – whose name I have
forgotten, so rare are instances of heroism in the field – who made it a habit
of blowing his sources every five years or so because he feared falling into a
slough of sycophancy.
Before we leave the question of cynicism, which is poorly
understood, allow me to use the substitute term “contrarian.” We know a thing
by contraries. If you want to know whether position A advances the common good,
you cannot arrive at an adequate answer to the question without due
consideration of position B -- B being “Not A.” Without a consideration of B, A
will be accepted unreflectively without serious examination. In all areas of
human life, we seek proportional balance. In Connecticut politics, we seek what
has been called internationally a “balance of power.”
Indeed, I may observe parenthetically that both state and national
constitutions provide a balance of power between three functions indispensable
to democracy: the legislative power of writing laws, the executive power of
executing laws, and the judicial power of judging laws. These powers should be
separate and equal -- in a special sense. And they cannot be equal unless they
are separate. Equality among the different departments is arrived at when each
department is prevented from encroaching on the constitutional prerogatives of
the other two departments. The powers are divided functionally so that each
function may retain its integrity. That
is constitutional balance. It is also good government.
The Sad Estate of Connecticut's Fourth Estate
It is important to bear in mind an adversarial balance when
discussing, say, the proper relationship between political parties or the
proper relationship between government and the media.
There is universal agreement that the relationship between
the Trump administration and the national media is an adversarial one. Some
wonder, however, whether in this instance the adversarial relationship is too
much of a good thing. A judicious journalistic balance weaves like a battered
boxer between too much and too little.
Moderation in all things -- though Trump seems to be unfamiliar with the
concept -- is still the golden rule. Then
too, the chief pursuit of good journalism is the objective, politically
unadorned truth, which ought never to be sacrificed to a strife of interests.
Was the relationship between the media and the Obama administration an
adversarial one? The frisson as Obama did what he pledged to do -- remake the United States from the bottom up -- was, as
many of us remember it, mild to non-existent.
Coming back to home plate, is the relationship between
Connecticut’s media and what we perhaps should call the Weicker-Malloy-Lamont
administration – all three administrations favoring tax increases over
long-term, permanent cost reductions – an adversarial one? On important
questions of the day, are Connecticut editorialists and commentators truly
objective? How many editorials in Connecticut papers may be described as
objectively conservative?
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