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| Blumenthal and Harris |
In Connecticut, Biden country, the expectations from a Joe Biden presidency appear to be a bit overripe.
Hours after President Elect Biden had garnered sufficient
electoral votes to put him over the top, two Hearst reporters enthused, “A Joe
Biden presidency is a new opportunity for Connecticut to win additional federal
investment and recover from the grips of the coronavirus pandemic, as the blue
state and its representatives can expect a closer relationship with the
Democrat and his administration, replacing an often antagonistic rapport with
President Donald Trump.”
Governor Ned Lamont of Connecticut was his usual ebullient
self, heartened by the prospect of funding from Washington DC: “This is going
to be a unique time in history. You’re going to have a president making
available money for us to fix the transportation system that’s been falling
apart over the last generation or so.”
Lamont did not pause to explain precisely why Connecticut
Democrats, in charge of the state budget for the last half century, had allowed
the state’s infrastructure to crumble. They had set aside, everyone supposed,
sufficient dedicated funds to fix the state’s roads and bridges. Money
supposedly flowing into a transportation fund from the state’s two gas taxes
had been, ahem, diverted over the years to settle extravagant budget expenses.
These purposeful diversions were engineered by state legislators, not Democrat
or Republican presidents.
The 2020 elections conferred on Connecticut Democrats an
outsized power; both chambers of the General Assembly – which has not properly
assembled for the last 6 months – now have near veto power, and Republicans in both
chambers, outnumbered two-to-one by Democrats, will be but an annoying shadow
to a Democrat caucus that will be able to steer and approve bills without so
much as a “by your leave” from Republicans.
Expenses do not worry national Democrats. The national deficit, cresting at $23.3 trillion last January, Democrat economists
patiently explained long ago, is a debt we owe to ourselves. The debt can be
discharged by pumping up the money supply, inflation be dammed. Connecticut’s
state debt, cresting at $67 billion – “a big deal” said Lamont in an unguarded moment – cannot be discharged by printing funny money, but the debt can always be passed
to a future generation of young folk who, coming of age, have wisely chosen to
flee, along with Connecticut businesses, to greener, less tax predatory states
elsewhere.
The last president who balanced the national budget was Democrat
Bill Clinton. Connecticut’s budgets have been “balanced” over the years through
highly inflated revenue projections, higher taxes and the shifting of
dedicated funds to pay for improvident spending – not that anyone, other than a
few aging Tea Party penny pinchers, really cares.
All the all-Democrat members of Connecticut’s US
Congressional Declaration are popping their corks at the prospect of being able
to plunder national tax funds. US Senator Dick Blumenthal and US Rep Rosa
DeLauro are fast friends of Biden. “They
expect an open door to the new administration and a receptive ear,” Hearst
reporters tell us. It’s not what you know but who you know, and DeLauro and
Blumenthal “have enjoyed a close relationship with Biden and his children for
decades.”
One of the Biden children, the resourceful Hunter Biden,
appears to have had a promising and remunerative relationship with the Chinese
Communist Party. Some jokingly wonder whether Hunter might not make a useful
ambassador to China. In painful detail, NBCNews explains why “Win or lose, the business dealings of Joe Biden's
family with China need to be investigated — but most especially if he wins.”
“Joe Biden,” Blumenthal said, “is going to be a seismically
good figure for Connecticut. If you wanted someone who could work with a
Republican Congress, there is no one better, elected or unelected, than Joe
Biden." If any reporters should wonder what work the word “seismically” performs
in that sentence, he or she should repair to a dictionary; seismic activity is
a measure of earthquakes. Blumenthal is an earthquake maker himself, but Biden?
Not so much. President-in-waiting Kamala (pronounced Calm-a-la) Harris is earthquakeier.
Her voting record places her to the left of socialist Bernie Sanders.
Amid all the euphoria, Coronavirus “science” and Axios, a politically neutral,
non-propagandistic journal, tell us that new infections “have surged by roughly
20% over the past week as cases continued to climb in every region of the
country.” A forecast of the Biden years by The American Enterprise Institute
(AEI) is rather gloomy, according to the Hearst piece: “Biden would increase
the top rate income tax rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent, scale back a
deduction for business income given to sole proprietorships, partnerships, S
corporations and raise the tax rate on capital gains and dividends
to 39.6 percent for those earning more than $1 million.”
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