I want to be sure to thank Pam Salamone and Mary Beeman for inviting me to speak to you today. I’ll begin by saying something about liberty and heroism, move on to discuss the status of Connecticut’s two political parties, and close with a Q&A session that, I hope, will open my own eyes to your genuine concerns. I won’t take much more than 20 minutes of your time.
You probably will not mind if, along the way, I take a paddle
to the deserving backsides of Governor Ned Lamont and President Joe Biden.
People in this room will be aware that they are outnumbered
by registered Democrats in the state by about two to one. Unaffiliateds
outnumber Democrats by a small margin. Connecticut’s larger cities have been in
the Democrat hopper for a half century or more – and it shows. Democrats in the
General Assembly have nearly a veto-proof majority. All the state’s
Constitutional offices are held by Democrats. Jodi Rell was the state’s last
“moderate” Republican Governor. She was followed by a bristly Dannel – please
don’t call him “Dan” – Malloy, now Chancellor of Maine’s higher education
system. And Malloy was followed by Ned Lamont, Lowell Weicker Jr.’s protégé.
Need I mention that Connecticut’s media was positioned during all these years
to the left of center?
The state’s media has quite given up its necessary role as a
contrarian force for good in Connecticut. Where’s my proof? Show me three
contrarian editorials in any newspaper that hold Lamont’s feet to a right of
center bonfire.
I’ve just described the condition of the Alamo prior to Santa
Anna’s successful attack upon it.
John F. Kennedy, running for the presidency, visited the
Alamo and delivered a short speech there – short because his schedule was tight
and he was due somewhere else. He kept looking at his watch, finished his
speech to a smattering of applause, and turned to the tour guide, a young
woman, to ask, “Where’s the back door?”
“Senator,” the young lady responded, “There are no back doors
to the Alamo – only heroes.”
It will take a heroic effort to reform Connecticut, but the
thing can be done. And when it is done, it will be found that activist women
and politically oppressed minorities had played a major role in the state’s
reformation. “Reformation” is a solid word suggesting a return to a politics
centered in the liberty of the person, combined with political action that
enriches people rather than government, lifting them up from despair and
poverty to independence and self-reliance.
The relationship between governors and the governed
throughout history has always been an inverse one. It goes like this: the
richer the government, the poorer the people; the more active the government,
the more sluggish and inert the people; a government of experts will produce a
citizenry of dolts; where the government does everything, the people need do
nothing, and nothing, as my dear old Italian Mom used to say, leads to nothing.
Where the liberties of the government extend to infinitude,
the natural freedoms of the people are reduced to a reluctant obedience. And
unease eventually leads to a reassertion of the natural liberties of the
person.
Davy Crockett did not die at the Alamo so that Santa Anna
could clothe himself in glory.
When King George of Britain heard that President George
Washington intended to give up his presidency and resume his life at Mount
Vernon as gentleman farmer, he said, “If Washington does that, he will be the
greatest man alive.”
Despite the strenuous efforts of our Educrats – mostly
over-schooled and undereducated “experts” – to redraft and reform the
historical record, we know who our heroes are. We know they are modest,
self-effacing – and fiercely determined to carry forward to our progeny the
grace and power of liberties bathed in the blood, sweat and tears of our
forbearers.
Shut Up and Obey
As everyone here surely knows, the two contestants for
Governor of Connecticut – Democrat incumbent Governor Ned Lamont and Republican
nominee for Governor Bob Stefanowski – debated each other at the end of
September. Postmodern debates, unlike the Lincoln-Douglas debates, are little
more than media availabilities.
Democrats seem determined not to allow Republicans too many
mano-a-mano press availabilities. Lamont has graciously agreed only to one and
two thirds debates. In his previous gubernatorial contest with Stefanowski,
Lamont allowed four debates. Apparently, his confortable lead in early pre-debate
polling, convinced Lamont and his debate coaches that mano-a-mono exposure
would not be helpful.
Present at the September debate was the Independent candidate
for governor Rob Hotaling , whose media availability cut by a third the
face-time of the two principal gubernatorial contestants. There were no serious
editorial objections in major Connecticut newspapers to a foreshortened debate
schedule. I leave it to you to wonder why.
During the debate, Lamont made one serious unforced error,
considerably downplayed by Connecticut’s pro-progressive, left of center media.
I leave it to you to wonder why .
During their debate, Stefanowski objected to Connecticut’s
obscenely large surplus. In a letter to Comptroller Natalie Braswell, CTNewsJunkie reported
at the end of September, OPM [Office of Policy Management] Secretary Jeff
Beckham wrote “The fund balance at the end of FY 2023 will exceed $5.6 billion,
or 25.4 percent of net General Fund appropriations for the current year. The
maximum allowed by law is 15% which means anything over that will automatically
be used to pay down pension debt.”
A $5.6 billion surplus, 25.4 percent of net General Fund
appropriations for the current year, most hard pressed Connecticut taxpayers
would agree, is not pocket change.
In 1986, Massachusetts, a deep blue New England state like
Connecticut, passed a piece of legislation – 62F – that mandated the return to
taxpayers of all tax collections that grow faster than the three-year average
of wage growth.
“Gov. Charlie Baker,” NBC Boston reported
in mid-September, “filed a fiscal year 2022 closeout budget that sets
aside $2.94 billion to be returned to taxpayers and leaves the Legislature
about $1.5 billion in surplus dollars to spend.”
Could there be a 62F statute, which ties tax growth to wage
growth, in Connecticut’s future?
Lamont responded that his surplus would serve as a hedge
against a coming RECESSION, and later,
at a regional Chamber of Commerce session, Lamont said, according to CTPost,
"Maybe we're going to have a surplus at the end of this fiscal year, maybe
we're not, but don't spend the surplus we don't have.” How it’s possible to
spend a surplus you don’t have may be a mystery to accountants.
Lamont continued, “That's the type of thing that got this
state into such a mess over the last 30, 40 years.” Wrong, what got the state
in trouble was spending beyond its means. Lamont continued, “I did a
debate the other day and my opponent [Stefanowski] spent that surplus, you
know, five times over. We're heading into what could be a REAL RECESSION."
Here, a trap door should have sprung open and swallowed whole
Lamont and all the king’s debate coaches.
In the scale of economic evils, inflation is a step down from
recession. And yet here was Lamont claiming a swollen surplus was necessary to
offset the ravages of a recession steaming round the corner.
For months and months, the Biden administration had been
hotly and falsely claiming the nation was not suffering from INFLATION,
universally defined as “too many dollars chasing too few goods.” It was and is
and will be for some time suffering from inflation. Any Soccer Mom filling up
her gas tank in preparation for a match could have told the economic “experts”
advising the inattentive Biden that they were all wet.
These implausible denials – there is no inflation; the coming
recession is a figment of fevered Republican and Make America Great Again
(MAGA) imaginations – are exploding, like a fireworks display, all around us.
And the denials here in Connecticut are all of a piece with majority Democrats’
successful attempts in the General Assembly to deny the realities lying right
under their noses and to discourteously deny Republicans legislators an opportunity to effectively
propose workable, non-progressive solutions to our most pressing economic and
cultural problems.
Economist Don Klepper-Smith, the Hartford
Courant tells us, very late in the game, “said he believes Connecticut
is in a recession. ‘Nothing here in this data takes me off the fact we are in a
recession.”
What data? “Connecticut’s economy shrank by 4.7% on an annual
basis in the three months ending June 30, as earnings weakened in manufacturing
and finance and insurance, three key industries, the U.S. Commerce Department
reported. The state ranked 49th in its economic performance in the second
quarter. Only Wyoming’s economy was weaker. Overall, the U.S. economy shrank by
0.6% on an annual basis.”
Lamont’s solution to the recessionary monsoon already upon us
-- pass around the bailing spoons -- is laughable. And his solution to such
dire economic problems – the state’s governor and representatives are aboard
the ship; tow up the lifeline – is a treacherous betrayal of a gubernatorial
mandate.
The Democrats want you reform-minded Republican women, and
any reform persistent Democrats and Unaffiliateds to shut up and obey their
infallible prescriptions. The good news is -- I sense some ardent resistance in
this room. Pam Salamone has said very clearly in her past campaign that you
cannot grow your way out of a recession through excessive taxation.
That resistance has been very lively in Boards of Education meetings across the
state, and the pushback against unnecessary mask wearing and racy books introducing
very young children to erotic experimentation, has been fierce.
It seems that mothers, if not Democrat politicians, fully
understand the doctrine of subsidiarity, which holds “that a central authority
should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be
performed at a more local level.”
With respect to educating children, the doctrine means that
the central authority – whether it be the state, municipal government or local
Boards of Education – should not override parental authority. Indeed, subsidiary
authorities are authorized, in a well ordered republic, to enforce the will of
parents, which is why we have elected Boards of Education. The whole notion of
democratic representation rests – always uneasily – on the principle of
subsidiarity. The very right to govern, here in the land of the free and the
home of the brave, still rests, always uneasily, on the will of the people. And
the law of the land is the law laid down by our founders in the U.S.
Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more
perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the
common defense,[promote the general Welfare, and secure the
Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish
this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Republican governance, no one in this room need be told, does
not depend upon the will to govern – it depends upon the will of the people to
be responsibly governed. And good governance depends upon the will of publicly
appointed representatives to promote the general welfare and secure the
blessings of LIBERTY to ourselves and our posterity. Every tax, every
regulation, every executive authoritarian dictat – we’ve had our fill of them
during the COVID crisis – is a deprivation of the liberty of the person, which
is why all of the above should be applied sparingly – very sparingly -- and
judiciously.
I began this talk by hitting some rather somber notes. But
I’d like to leave you with a light note. Newt Gingrich wrote yesterday:
“I recently received an email from Barry
Casselman, an old friend and long-time election analyst who writes a
regular newsletter on politics. On Saturday, he wrote to me, ‘Now Connecticut?’
He explained that a new poll found that Democrat Sen. Richard
Blumenthal was only leading Republican challenger Leora Levy by five
points (49 percent to 44 percent). Two weeks ago, a poll had him above 50
percent and leading by 13 points. Casselman simply asked, ‘Can CT be in play?’
“I checked with people who know Connecticut politics a lot
better than I do, and the answer was surprisingly affirmative.
“This is a year when any Democrat incumbent below 50 is
potentially vulnerable. In addition to Levy on the Connecticut ticket,
Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Stefanowski now trails Gov. Ned Lamont
by only six points (40 percent to 46 percent), according to a Connecticut
Examiner poll.
“Importantly, the poll was taken before the brutal killing of
two police officers in Bristol, Connecticut. The police declined to let Gov.
Lamont speak at a memorial service for the officers, because Lamont signed a
law during the Black Lives Matters protests that restricted law enforcement and
let criminals go free.”
Thank you all for being so patient and attentive. If you have
any questions relating to anything on your minds, we can toss them around. Or
if you have a comment, that will do just as well. I’d be very interested in
hearing what you think an effective resistance to political stupidity in
Connecticut might entail.
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