Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Campaign money raised by DeLauro and challengers Those of us who paid close attention to the Republican presidential primary of 2016, which gave us President Donald Trump, and the current Democrat primary, which could give the country its first socialist president in Bernie Sanders, though this seems increasingly unlikely, have come away from these rough and tumble experiences thinking that political anarchy in the country’s two major parties is perhaps more ruinous than party bossism. Primaries, it is true, did get rid of the party bosses. Old news hounds will remember with some affection Connecticut Democrat Party boss John Bailey, the last of his kind in the state. All of the stink and corruption associated with party bossism remain, and incumbents are no more likely to be dispossessed of their power in the new system than they were under the iron rule of the bosses. “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” the French say -- the more things change, the more they rem...

Ever since former Editorial Page Editor of the Hartford Courant Carol Lumsden left her position at the paper, the Hartford Courant has been renting out its editorial page to other left of center newspapers. At the beginning of February, the paper, summoning up courage, displayed a Courant editorial on tolling. It was, as one might expect, left of left of center. “The time for half-measures is over,” the Courant bravely announced. “Connecticut residents spend way too much time alone in their cars and we’re destroying the planet in the process.” Cars and their owners are now planet destroyers, don't ya know. Perhaps Connecticut’s environmentally woke General Assembly can be convinced to outlaw the use of cars by these murderers, a measure that would “vastly expand mass transit, provide green options like bike paths in cities and work to actualize a future where cars play less of a role in our daily lives.” For nutmeggers who have not yet jumped the hedge and moved to, ...

Martin Looney “When asked by a reporter whether the [toll] hearing would be opened up to the general public after hearing from experts and guest speakers,” the Yankee Institute reported, “[President of the Senate Martin] Looney said he was working out the details with House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin. “'I’ve not had any discussions with the Speaker as to whether or not it would be structured in a way to carve out a special allocation of time for invited speakers or anything like that,’ Looney said.”

Themis Klarides "Nice guy Lamont" – Malloy without the porcupine quills, some say – is now taking hostages until January, after which his temporary “trucks only” toll proposal, with the assistance of the two gatekeepers of the General Assembly, President of the Senate Martin Looney and Speaker of the House Joe Arsimowicz, will have been forced through the Democrat dominated General Assembly in a proposal packed session that, some think, may last through Christmas. The Christmas calendar, it is hoped, will weaken the resistance of the toll opposition in the General Assembly, mostly Republicans with a scattering of Democrats holding politically shaky seats in both chambers. Republicans are stoutly opposed to tolls for all the right reasons but, in the end, it is numbers, not right reason, that will win the day, and Democrats, easily herdable, have larger numbers than Republicans.

Fasano and Looney “The numbers add up. I’m here to solve problems — not to study problems. ... Let’s get this thing started in an honest and comprehensive way.”   -- Governor Lamont to Connecticut's media. Democrats may have been thinking that among the many blessings Connecticut’s overtaxed citizens should thank  God for this past Thanksgiving was – tolls. We are told that Governor Ned Lamont and “legislators” – read, Democrat legislators -- had decided, during a closed conference two days before Thanksgiving, to present a trucks only tolls “compromise” bill to the General Assembly before Christmas. And a Merry Christmas to you too. This may seem, in Yogi Berra’s memorable phrase, like “deja vu all over again” to folks gathered around the Thanksgiving table this year, many of whom have arrived in Connecticut from less tax predatory states. Connecticut’s state and local tax burden is 12.6%, second in the nation behind New York, according to a 2019 rep...

Martin Looney There is no indication that any of the various toll plans offered during the past year were ever palatable to a majority of Connecticut voters. During the second week of November, Senate President Pro Tem Martin M. Looney at long last took the hint. “I think we need to find something that is broadly palatable in the General Assembly and also to the public,” he said. The shelving of tolls – for now – does not mean that some other toll plan may not be advanced after the upcoming elections by a Democrat dominated General Assembly always hungry for new revenue streams. A new revenue source would relieve the General Assembly, responsible for all getting and spending in Connecticut, of the necessity, ever more apparent, of cutting spending, the alternative to raising taxes. Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff noted, “I think we all want to move forward on a [transportation improvement] plan, we just have got to figure out how to fund it.”

Like a quiescent vampire snoozing by night in his coffin, the prospect of tolls, which the No Tolls CT group thought it had slain, is now showing signs of new life. This may be Governor Ned Lamont’s third or fourth – one loses count – toll proposal iteration. According to a story in a Hartford paper, Lamont is proposing tolls only on bridges “ as low as 40 to 80 cents under revised plan .” What a bargain, as compared with his previous proposals. Lamont, during his campaign for governor, first proposed a trucks only toll on numerous gantries – one loses count. The No Tolls CT movement -- perhaps the first real populist, in the sense of popular, movement in Connecticut since the much abused Tea Party movement a decade past – pretty much slayed the toll dragon after Lamont, now elected governor, expanded his proposal to include pretty much anyone in the state traveling on   a major highway. The Tea Party movement was more or less buried under an avalanche of spending and cor...

Kevin Rennie wondered in his blog “Daily Ructions” why, under “the grocery tax set to take effect Oct. 1, six bagels won't be subject to the higher sales tax, but five bagels will, because they're considered to be prepared foods for immediate consumption.” And he then proposed a solution to the conundrum: “The legislature needs to change this law.” Governor Ned Lamont, Rennie wrote, is attempting “to erase the advantage grocery stores that sell prepared foods have over restaurants,” an alibi that seemed to him suspect. If Lamont were at all worried about the restaurant business in Connecticut, “he would not have singled it out for an increase in the sales tax from 6.35 percent to 7.35 percent. He wanted the money more than he cared about the cost of dining out and its consequences for restaurant owners, workers and patrons.” And, truly, if Lamont and his handlers were worried about equity alone, the governor and the tax hungry crowd of Democrat progressives in th...

  I can’t imagine how you can think philosophy and wine are similar—except in this one respect, that philosophers sell their learning as shopkeepers their wares; and most of them dilute it, too, and defraud customers  — Lucian, “The Sale Of Philosophers” Governor Ned Lamont has two serious problems. The first is his inexperience in Connecticut politics, which makes him the plaything of lean and hungry Democrat leaders who have a wealth of experience in Connecticut politics. And the second is  Red Jahncke . “First, it was diversion. Now it’s ‘interception,’” Jahncke writes in the  Connecticut Post . His article should have been titled “What a wicked web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”

Gail Lavielle You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. – Abe Lincoln If Governor Ned Lamont -- approval rating at the end of April 33 percent -- fails re-election to a second term in 2023, the inscription on his political tombstone may well read, “He flopped when he should have flipped.” The serial mistakes of the Lamont administration so far are beginning to look alarmingly like incompetence. Rep. Gail Lavielle of Wilton , a former ranking member of the Education Committee and now a ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, not easily appalled, said she was appalled at the process deployed by the Lamont administration to select the Commissioner of the State Board of Education.

Lamont Looney Aresimowicz Clever frogs know how to take a step back so that they might advance two steps forward. Governor Ned Lamont met recently with the governors of two contiguous states, Rhode Island and Massachusetts to palaver about infrastructure maintenance. A fierce middle class taxpayer opposition to tolling in Connecticut has given the governor and the two Democrat gate-keepers in the General Assembly, Senate President Martin Looney and Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz, political hiccups. Lamont began pushing for tolls during his election campaign for governor. In that campaign, Republican nominee for governor  Bob Stefanowski  was widely derided by Democrats and critics in the state’s media for centering his campaign on a pledge to do away with Connecticut’s income tax over a ten year period. Pressing on, Stefanowski said his pledge was aspirational and, once accomplished, would reset Connecticut in New England’s crown as a haven from excessive t...

“When the fiscal year closes,"Governor Ned Lamont said after he had dotted the “i’s” and crossed the “t’s” of his budget, "Connecticut will have the largest rainy day fund in history and this budget maintains and grows our reserves, providing reliability and predictability for our taxpayers, businesses, and those looking to invest in our state well into the future.” Lamont did not bother to pause and ask, “Why does the state need such large reserves, the largest in state history?”

Following a meeting with Republican and Democrat leaders of the General Assembly, the question before the house being tolls, Governor Ned Lamont was asked by a reporter how things went. Lamont answered, “Well, as they say after those State Department summits, I’d say we had frank and honest discussions,” meaning the bipartisan needle had not moved forward. Republicans, and likely much of the state, do not want tolls. “’No, we don’t support tolls, period,’ said Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven,” in a CTMirror account. “He added that he believes Senate Democrats would not call a vote on tolls without some Republican support, an assertion Senate Democratic leaders would not confirm or dispute.” President Pro Tem of the state Senate Martin Looney -- along with Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz, both legislative goalies -- was asked to comment on the frank and honest discussions. “’I would not comment on that directly until we have a caucus,’ said Senate P...

Democrats put off a vote on tolling during the recently concluded legislative session because, plain and simple, they did not have the votes to pass a tolling bill. But hope springs eternal. House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz thought he may have had the votes to pass the measure in the House, but passage was still an iffy proposition. Mark Pazniokas writes in the Hartford Business Journal , “Aresimowicz’s comments reflect a belief among lawmakers that the Lamont administration botched the rollout of tolls in February, giving Republicans, the trucking industry and others an opportunity to frame tolls as just another demand on residents.”

The reader will find below three self-interviews that are meant to serve as a prologue to a longer piece – “Connecticut Down.”  The first is set a little more than a month after Governor Ned Lamont had been sworn into office; the second is set just before Lamont presented his budget to the General Assembly; and the last is set a day after the Lamont/Looney/Aresimowicz budget was passed by the state Senate.

The Democrat plan to “to have cities and towns share in the cost of public school teachers’ pensions,” as the Hartford Courant put it in a recent story, continues to be “controversial,” perhaps the understatement of the year. The plan would “cost municipalities a combined $73 million a year and would lead to property tax increases across the state.” The principal spokesman for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, Kevin Maloney, has characterized the plan to shift to towns some cost of pensions without giving the towns the opportunity to cut spending by reducing teacher salaries and benefits  as “the largest unfunded state mandate in recent memory,” and the executive director of the Connecticut Council of Small Towns Betsy Gara has said, “Shifting $73 million in pension costs onto the backs of already overburdened homeowners and other property taxpayers will diminish housing values, undermining our state and local economies." Local government relies on prop...

A piece by Keith Phaneuf in CTMirror, “ Who pays the next CT tax hike? Democrats must answer question soon ” presents half of the right question.   Listening to Democrats in the General Assembly in this the winter of our discontent leaves the impression that one has heard half a conversation. The debate in the General Assembly and, unfortunately, in the media, ALL OF IT, is about discharging deficits through tax increases. But a deficit, like a coin, has two sides. And a “comprehensive solution” to our problems that shows only one face is no solution. If the level of spending in Connecticut continues to increase at a rapid rate – and that will assuredly happen if Connecticut continues to pursue a course all too familiar ever since former Governor Lowell Weicker forced his income tax down the throat of a somewhat resistant legislature in 1991 – and if the underside of the getting and spending coin continues to remain face-down on Connecticut’s table, then tax increases are i...

O ne of my college professors – let’s call him Stringfellow – spoke in long, flowing sentences, each of which might easily have been parsed into sparkling separate mini-poems. He liked Faulkner, disliked Hemingway, and tolerated Tennessee Williams for two reasons. Williams consciously structured some of his plays on classical Greek models – compare “Suddenly Last Summer” with Euripides’ “The Bacchae” – and Tennessee, he thought, was a name one could conjure with, as Wallace Stevens did adeptly in "Anecdote of the Jar," the first line of which runs, “I placed a jar in Tennessee/ And round it was, upon a hill …” One day, a student asked Stringfellow – this would have been in the middle 60’s – “When do you plan to join the 20 th century?’ to which Stringfellow replied, “It would be a very wicked thing to wish to be a part of the 20 th century.”

“Government… is force” George Washington At least one Connecticut Journalist, Kevin Rennie in the Hartford Courant, believes that Governor Ned Lamont’s poorly concealed campaign lies concerning truck-only tolls will haunt him during his entire term or terms, as the case may be, in office. “This [the campaign flip-flop] raises some long-term worries,” Rennie writes , “about Lamont’s ability to lead. Lamont may have surrounded himself with people who do not understand that the public sees campaign promises as something more than gossamer thoughts. Just as troubling is the prospect that there is no one around the Greenwich millionaire who could persuade him that abandoning a key campaign promise 38 days into his administration would inflict lasting damage on him. He will no longer be believed — a crippling wound for any governor.”

Following Governor Ned Lamont's presentation of his budget to the General Assembly, the question remains: Is Ned Lamont Malloy II? He may turn out to be Malloy without the quills Lamont’s budget includes hefty increases in taxes; as defined here, a tax is any dollar that moves from private wallets into the public treasury. Accumulatively, Lamont’s tax extensions – they are not a revocation of tax exemptions – closely approaches the tax increases of the Malloy administration.   Taxes under the Lamont administration will also be made more progressive according to the reliable Marxian formula: "From  each according  to his ability, to  each according  to his needs." Because of past economic sleight of hand, the neediest recipient of state dollars, it turns out, is the state treasury. In the past, when expenses have gone up and revenue has plummeted, Connecticut has increased taxes to recover ensuing deficits. Lamont repeats the process in a higher key...