“No man's life,
liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session” --
Gideon J. Tucker
For very good reasons, the above quote has been
misattributed to political scourge Mark Twain. Connecticut’s legislative
session will close June 4. Until that time, Connecticut taxpayers would be wise
to guard their life liberty and property from greedy neo-progressives in the
General Assembly.
It was Twain who reminded us, “Politicians and diapers must
be changed often, and for the same reason.”
Mark Pazniokas of CTMirror tells us, “The Senate
Democratic majority passed a bill Wednesday that would provide jobless benefits
to strikers in Connecticut, defying Gov. Ned Lamont’s expected veto should the
measure pass the House and reach his desk…The bill would provide unemployment
insurance to strikers after two weeks out of work, similar to the policies of
the only two states with jobless benefits for strikers, New York and New
Jersey.”
In the past, “The land of steady habits” has copied
neo-progressive programs originating in both states – and California, Governor
Gavin Newsom’s home turf. As mayor of San Francisco and later governor of
California, Newsom long has been regarded as the tip of the nation’s
neo-progressive spear. As a prospective Democrat presidential candidate – Newsom’s
gubernatorial term is term-limited – the governor has mellowed somewhat.
Pazniokas notes, “Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a
potential Democratic candidate for president, vetoed a bill similar to the one
passed Wednesday by the [Connecticut] state Senate.”
The pro-union Connecticut Senate Bill 8, Pazniokas reminds
us, “is a priority of Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, a
student of the American labor movement who argues that labor laws favor
employers, even more so since Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House.”
“This is not putting a thumb on the scale to over-balance
the scale for workers,” Looney tells us. “This is to at least reduce the
tipping of the scale in the other direction, by at least a bit. That’s really
how I see it.”
Connecticut state employee union leaders no doubt agree.
Union administrators in the state for decades were tipping election scales in
Looney’s favor through direct and indirect campaign contributions and the steady
supply of unionized foot soldiers during campaigns to assure that the election
scales are slanted in favor of Looney. The Looney bill, some taxpayers and
wide-awake political reporters in Connecticut are sure to notice, is a love
letter to unions, despite the state Senate Pro Tem’s implausible assertion.
Looney’s real business as a state senate legislative
gatekeeper is to maintain order in the Democrat dominated Senate and to assure
that unwanted and upsetting Republican Party amendments to bills die aborning,
an easy matter in a General Assembly autocratically dominated by Looney in the
state Senate and Speaker of the state House Matt Ritter.
Looney’s, pay-union-workers-to-strike bill, Pazniokas tells
us, “passed on a 24-11 party-line vote, with Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex, not
voting. At Looney’s insistence, the Senate narrowly passed a similar bill as a
test in 2022, knowing it would not come to a vote in the House.”
But that was then. “House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford,
said Wednesday that SB 8 would get a vote in the House this year in the final
seven days before the legislature reaches its constitutional deadline of
midnight on June 4.”
Some notable spend-conscious leaders in the Republican Party
– among them the inimitable state Senator Rob Sampson, Senate Minority Leader
Steve Harding, and House Republican Leader Vincent Candelora – have long
chaffed under one party rule.
Candelora blasted the pro-union Looney bill, Chris Keating
of the Hartford Courant tells us. The
Looney bill was “written purposely to help unions,” Candelora said: “I think it’s
sending the wrong message to the state of Connecticut… we do labor bills every
other day in this chamber, but we don’t have conversations about how to grow
Connecticut’s economy. So we continue to see bills that are choking out our
businesses in the state 0f Connecticut for a very small population of union
workers. We have abused our unemployment system in Connecticut.”
And cool-headed Courant reporter Keating notes that
Democrats “have been under extreme pressure on the [Looney] bill from union
members, who have helped Democrats win elections for decades and can also find
candidates to force primaries against incumbent Democrats.”
Looney’s sinecure, one may be certain, is hardened against
Connecticut employee union attack.
If politics were a science, one of its indisputable natural
laws would be: You always get more of what you finance. If the state of
Connecticut finances strikes, the state will reap what it has financed – more
strikes, diminished economic activity, and even louder and more insistent calls
among neo-progressive Democrats to come to the aid of striking workers.
This is a win-win for Looney, not so much for hard pressed
state taxpayers.
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