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| Bysiewicz |
Bysiewicz believes in toll taxing. So do Governor of
Connecticut Ned Lamont and virtually all progressive Democrats in the state’s
General Assembly. True, the governor has had some difficulty deciding precisely
whom to tax: first truckers, then anyone who presumes to drive cars to work,
then, as opposition to tolling the state began to mount, big rigs again. At
least one published newspaper columnist thought theses wild and imprudent
gyrations signaled a fatal political inexperience on behalf of Lamont, and
there are of course numberless Democrat gubernatorial wannabes who would
heartily agree.
But Lamont is not the only scapegoat upon which the sins of
the Democrat majority in the General Assembly may be pinned before the
sacrifice is committed to the flames. Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz has
announced she is available for scorching.
Majority Democrats are rather hoping that voters will hold
blameless ALL Democrats once a tolling bill is passed -- if the final vote will
hinge on Bysiewicz, who appears willing to be thrown on the rock heap, an eager sacrifice for her party’s sake. Ruling Democrats are convinced dupable
voters cannot do the political calculus and blame EVERY politician, nearly all
Democrats, who vote in favor of tolls. Politicians used to navigating troubled
waters are, in other words, counting on the stupidity of born suckers; there's
one born every minute, according to the old saying.
Time and the November elections – during which EVERY member
of the General Assembly will be stood up before the voter’s firing squad – will
decide the issue. We must not dismiss out of hand the possibility that a
majority of Connecticut voters, many of whom, on automatic pilot, unthinkingly
cast ballots under the heady influence of partisan political Babbitts, may be
born suckers.
Republicans in the General Assembly are hoping the tax
drubbing received from progressives in the General Assembly and two Democrat
governors, Lamont and Dannel Malloy, will convince any but the most hard-boiled
Democrats to change their voting habits in this “the land of steady habits.”
The number of tolling gantries, Republican leader in the House Themis Klarides
has said, is of little account. “Democrats don’t need a bill that says install
100 tolls. They only need a bill that says install one toll” – and the rest will
follow.
Bysiewicz is an unlikely sacrifice. She has not been – how to say
this without giving offense? – a politician beloved of left leaning commentators and editorialists. Former “Maverick” Senator and
Governor Lowell Weicker owns this treasured spot in the left’s grateful tear
ducts. Weicker is the man, an anti-Republican-Republican, who fended off
spittle in 1991 and gave Connecticut’s progressive Democrats an income tax. Lamont’s
toll tax is, like Weicker’s income tax, a fresh revenue source that will
relieve progressive legislators of the pressing necessity of making permanent,
long term cuts in spending.
These heroic figures of the left, now including Bysiewicz, fail
to understand that the "difficult thing" may also be the WRONG thing,
as when politicians seek to drive square spikes through round holes. In a
representative system of government, party-hack support among politicians
cannot be considered courageous. In Connecticut, now a one party state,
Democrats command the executive department, the legislative department, the
U.S. Congressional Delegation, all the Constitutional officers in the state,
and the judicial department. At the end
of his term in January 2019, the total number of Malloy appointees was 53; the
number of judges appointed by Malloy’s predecessor, Jodi Rell, was 0, according
to Ballotpedia.
What is the point, after all, of possessing absolute power –
if you are not prepared to abuse it?
A concurrent vote on tolling in both houses of the Democrat
dominated General Assembly that leapfrogs over the usual legislative process IS
an abuse of power.
“They [Democrat decision makers in the General Assembly] want
to use a process that involves both chambers voting at exactly the same time,”
said the not easily befuddled Gail Lavielle, House Ranking Member of the
General Assembly’s Appropriations Committee and a member of the Transportation
Committee. “To do this, a second, identical bill must be introduced so that
both can debate simultaneously and then synchronize the voting in both
chambers. This has never been done before in CT or possibly anywhere else. They
[Democrat members of the House and Senate] are doing this because they don't
trust each other. There may be a vote this week, and there may not. We never
know from one day to the next.”
As usual, longtime commentator on Connecticut politics Chris Powell got it exactly right,
“Tolls are a tough
issue politically, but the more Democrats fear letting their constituents know
what they really think, the less their constituents should trust them.”
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