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“Patriotism if you must, but please no parades” – George Bernard Shaw
Governor Ned Lamont, a successful businessman to judge by
his asset status, is attempting to lure profitable business from pro-life
states. To this end he has placed a recruitment ad in several backwater states
that have imposed restrictions on abortion.
A Hartford newspaper covered the ad in a story – “Abortion rights touted to bring jobs,”
and Lamont is quoted in the story – to this effect:
Dear business owners,
Now more than ever is
the time to look at Connecticut as the future home of your business.
We have the workforce,
the high quality of life and the values that we know will make you, your
families and your employees feel welcome.
We are writing to any
business owner that is disappointed in the stance of their current state
[concerning abortion restrictions]. If you are looking to relocate to a state
that supports the rights of women and whose actions and laws are unwavering in
support of tolerance and inclusivity, Connecticut is for you.
The business ad, underwritten by Lieutenant Governor Susan
Bysiewicz, also included, according to the paper, “a video of Lamont making his pitch from his Capitol office.”
What is the proverbial “Man from Mars,” touched down in
Connecticut, to make of all this?
If he is a Fabian Socialist, like George Bernard Shaw, he
might turn Shaw’s quote cited above to a better purpose: “Abortion if you must,
but please no ads.”
Just to begin with, an ad is a cry to buy a doubtful product
that might not sell unsmothered with ads. Then too, abortion, the termination
of human life, will always be a hard sell for those who have eyes to see and
ears to hear ultrasounds.
Very likely, the ad is for home consumption. An off term
election is looming on the horizon and Connecticut, known in Colonial days for
selling wooden nutmegs to credulous buyers, has a few sales problems, some of
them mentioned by Nebraska Governor Pete
Ricketts, whose review of the Lamont ad was less than laudatory.
“But in response to Lamont, Nebraska Public Media reported,
“Ricketts said ‘Nebraska is a pro-life and pro-liberty state.’ And he added ‘Unlike
the high taxes, expensive cost of living, high income inequality, and
burdensome regulations in Connecticut, Nebraska is committed to making it
affordable and easy to do business in the Cornhusker State,’ inviting
businesses to consider moving here.”
Connecticut, once known as “The Provision State,” because it provided munitions and clothes to General George Washington’s rag-tailed army, has now become, thanks to a highly politicized opposition to a perfectly reasonable Supreme Court Decision, Dobbs v Jackson, an abortion haven for out of state abortion seekers at a time when medical abortions by means of inexpensive pills are overtaking the kind of service provided by Planned Parenthood.
And, at the same time, if one pays attention to demographers,
the entire developed world is approaching a sort of demographic Armageddon. The
worldwide population Replacement rate, the number of children that a
couple would have to have over the course of their reproductive years in order
to replace themselves, is 2.1 children per couple, according to UN figures.
Presently the figure
in the United States is 1.64.
In the meantime, according to one newspaper report -- More
Companies Join the ‘Great Migration’ to Red States: Blue states believe their
abortion policies can bring companies back – “Caterpillar and
Citadel, which in June announced their exit out of Illinois, are only
the latest firms to leave high-tax, high-regulation states. Tesla, Hewlett
Packard, Oracle, and Remington are also among the hundreds of companies
flocking out of California, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey to
business-friendly places like Texas, Florida, Arizona, and Tennessee.
Relocating companies have spanned industries including tech, finance, media,
heavy manufacturing, autos, and firearms.”
The nationwide movement from high tax and regulatory states
to friendlier low tax, low regulation states resembles a sort of economic dust
bowl movement from crippling command economies to free market oases, and the
lesson is lost on the above mentioned states.
We can never remind ourselves often enough that it is
through inattention to the realities that lay right under our noses and a perverse,
willful, politically purposeful stupidity that once great states fail, never to
return to their former glory.
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