Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

That crunching sound you hear is the fall of the house of Malloy. Governor Dannel Malloy’s disapproval rating at Mid-March was a hefty 68 percent, according to a recent poll published by Quinnipiac College . The low approval rating of 23 percent marks Mr. Malloy, head of the Democratic Governors Association, as the most unpopular governor in the nation, only a few weeks after Mr. Malloy was awarded the Kennedy Center’s Profile in Courage Award. A previous Connecticut Governor, Lowell Weicker, also received the same award shortly after his popularity rating in the state plummeted during his contentious term in office, in the course of which Mr. Weicker had vetoed three non-income tax budgets and finally succeeded in forcing the General Assembly to impose an income tax on a state that once had attracted businesses because it was a low tax, low regulatory Eden.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread” – Anatole France. Connecticut must reduce business costs in the next decade. A failure to do so will reinforce the status quo : business flight from Connecticut to more business-friendly states, resulting in fewer jobs and less revenue pouring into the state treasury -- which, as we know from bitter experience, produces budget deficits. The deficits, in their turn, lead inescapably to higher taxes or cuts in services to the state’s most needy recipients of state aid. We live in a state in which politicians captured by special interests are less concerned with the poor who live under bridges than they are with securing the votes of far richer political activists who can turn them in and out of office.