Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Governor Ned Lamont’s slippage in the polls is not surprising. Former Governor Dan Malloy, now gainfully employed reforming education in Maine, casts a long shadow, and Lamont’s policy prescriptions – including his budget, now on its way to approval by the Democrat dominated General Assembly – do not differ much from Malloy’s in matters of getting and spending. Some may notice that a new expression, “modernize” and its variants, has made its way into Democrat oratory. Lamont said of his massive sales tax increases, “Look, we’re gonna try and modernize our sales tax structure… In fact, wanna know why sales tax revenues are already up compared to what we had expected” That’s cause of sales tax applying to e-commerce.” Lamont is a graduate of high-priced colleges. So what’s all this business about “gonna” and “wanna”? Do Harvard and Yale lack speech teachers? The use of the word “modernize” is gonna become an Orwellian catch phrase for “increasing and broadening sales taxes....

CTMirror notes in a recent story that minority leader in the state House of Representations Themis Klarides has voiced her concern often enough that “when Democrats expanded their lead in the House and regained control of the Senate — that the majority is gearing up to spend recklessly…   ‘All we have heard from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle has been more, bigger, and let’s expand,’ Klarides said.” Effective Republican resistance to spending increases, always a matter of numbers in the General Assembly, will be severely reduced in the new session.

C hris Powell begins his column on Nelson "Oz" Griebel  with a backhanded compliment: “Griebel is a substantial guy and more familiar with state government than the gubernatorial nominees of the major parties, Democrat Ned Lamont and Republican Bob Stefanowski,” followed by a backhand, “But Griebel has gone completely establishment now and it is hard to distinguish his positions from Lamont's. They both support raising taxes again to avoid offending influential interest groups that deserve offending. They argue that economic growth is what Connecticut needs most though the state will never have it as long as those interest groups keep first claim on state government's revenue.” The pursuit of the elusive unaffiliated vote has destroyed more politicians in Connecticut than the usual and expected corrupt political activity.

"There ain't no more bottom to this bottom" -- diner wisdom How Did Rich Connecticut Morph Into One Of America's Worst Performing Economies? ” Jim Powell asked in a stunning piece in Forbes magazine more than five years ago. In the often quoted words of former Prime Minister of Britain Maggie Thatcher, the state ran out of other people’s money. Former Governor Lowell Weicker’s 1991 income tax was followed, taxpayers of Connecticut will recall, by two additional massive tax impositions, the largest and the second largest in state history, initiated by present Governor Dannel Malloy – disapproval rating 72 percent, the lowest in the nation, according to Morning Consult . With the additional taxes in hand, spending spiked. The last non-income tax budget in the William O’Neill administration was $7.5 billion, a figure that tripled within the space of four governors. These tax increases relieved the Democrat dominated General Assembly of the necessity of inst...

Jim Powell asked in an eye-opening piece in Forbes magazine 67 months ago, “ How Did Rich Connecticut Morph Into One Of America's Worst Performing Economies ?" A partial answer, freighted with supportive data, has now been advanced in a piece commissioned by The Yankee Institute titled “ Above the Law: How Government Unions’ Extralegal Privileges Are Harming Public Employees, Taxpayers And The State ."  Everyone, both inside and outside the state, is intimately familiar with the bad news most of us have internally affirmed during the past few decades. Consider the rise in the Connecticut’s “fixed costs,” a fixed cost being one that can be reduced only by extraordinary, politically unlikely efforts: “In 2006, fixed costs constituted only 37 percent of the state’s budget; by 2018 that amount was 53 percent.” In 2016, the Census Bureau reported that Connecticut was one of only eight states to lose population. Fixed costs are strangling the state’s economy and pus...

I happen to be writing something on Mark Twain’s politics, and I couldn’t help but wonder what he might have thought rather than written – for Twain was fairly cautious, some would say over-cautious, while his wife and censor Oliva was still alive – about recent Connecticut politics. Surely Twain would have noticed that the flight of progressive politicians from their sinecures have followed the flight of businesses and entrepreneurial capital from his beloved state. There’s got to be some heavy levity, Twain’s specialty, in there somewhere. Not even Olivia, the keeper of Twain’s reputation, could have prevented him from poking fun at Connecticut’s political Grand Guignol. Following a fatal dip in the polls, Governor Dannel Malloy has chosen not to run again, and he has been followed out the door by his Lieutenant Governor, a promising Democrat gubernatorial prospect who has not spent time in prison, Comptroller Kevin Lembo, Attorney General George Jepsen, and other Democ...

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning” -- Winston Churchill Governor Dannel Malloy’s last “ State of the State ” address might well serve as the last chapter of his forthcoming autobiography, to be titled  "He Meant Well," assuming there is to be an autobiography. Wisely, Malloy avoided mentioning the budget, growing like a tumor on the side of Connecticut’s face. Budgets, getting and spending plans two years out, map the destiny of the state. In place of destiny, Malloy’s address was brimming with utopian froth.

Connecticut, as everyone who has been leaving it knows, is in a bad way. How bad is it? The state is still recovering from a recession that had ended elsewhere in the nation in June 2009. For eight years, we have been hobbling along and are now the only state in the nation that has yet to recover from the recession – which is, as everyone who has been leaving the state knows, a slowdown in business activity. There are two very good reasons why Connecticut has been so laggard: 1) Governor Dannel Malloy’s first tax increase, the largest in state history, and 2) Governor Malloy’s second tax increase, the second largest in state history. But then, we were forewarned.  Lowell Weicker did caution us during his campaign for governor that raising taxes in a recession would be like throwing gas on a fire, only a few months before he instituted his income tax, over the heated objections of a Republican Party rump in the General Assembly. When Weicker was met by the largest rally...

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities” -- Voltaire Chris Powell would blush to hear someone say it, but his retirement from the Journal Inquirer in January will leave a gaping hole in Connecticut journalism. Fortunately, Powell’s voice will still ring out in columns. The press notice announcing his retirement was placed amusingly on the right side of the paper’s obituary page.

It would be a grave error to interpose between speakers at UConn and their audiences an administrative apparat whose sole purpose is to decide which speakers are acceptable. It may still be possible to learn some lessons from an incident that occurred at UConn in which a speaker invited to address the university’s Republican Club, Lucian Wintrich, had been successfully shouted down and later arrested by UConn police. Wintrich, a White House reporter for The Gateway Pundit, may have been arrested to assure his safety from the fascists who shouted him down, stole his speech, and later sought to confront him as he left the campus. Charges leading to his arrest were quickly dropped by the prosecutor during a court appearance, and new charges were brought against the thief who had stolen Wintrich’s address, a just resolution since the thief, student adviser at Quinebaug Valley Community College Catherine Gregory, was the aggressor who had, along with her cheering section,...

Thanks to State Representative Rob Samson, one of the few legislators who have not been cowed by Connecticut’s powerful abortion lobby, abortion extremists have publicly shown their horns. The Family Institute of Connecticut  (FIC) put it this way: “On the final day of the legislative session June 7th, Rep. Rob Sampson attached a pro-life parental notification amendment to a contraception bill. But the possibility that a parent might be notified about her underage daughter’s decision to have an abortion so enraged Connecticut’s pro-abortion lobbyists that they killed their own bill rather than allow a vote on the amendment!”

At the beginning of April, Connecticut’s State Board of Education, by de-linking student evaluations and teacher performance, dismantled the last remnant of Governor Dannel Malloy’s valiant attempt to reform public school education. For a long, long while it was touch and go. In most businesses – and public education is one of the state’s biggest Big Businesses -- the free market acts as a check on inferior products and services. If the widget or service produced by business A does not perform up to expectations, the purchaser will turn to A’s competitor, business B, and in due course business A will either be driven from the field or improve its product or service. This process, which insures improvement, does not apply to public education – a state monopoly that draws its financing from tax receipts. Only a governor or a legislature can deny public funds to inferior schools, and doing so – if you are a Democrat reliant on state employee unions for sustenance -- is a hazardous ...

  In the matter of abortion, U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal is all in. The Senator, while he was for 20 years Connecticut’s Attorney General, was not known to shy away from prosecuting companies large and small that had violated some obscure regulation. He also had recommended regulations to Connecticut’s General Assembly if he found that a regulation would satisfy his own view of ethical commerce, much to the dismay of Connecticut companies already burdened with excessive regulations. When he moved from the Attorney General’s office to the U.S. Senate, Mr. Blumenthal left in his wake a trail of regulatory tears flowing down the cheeks of his commercial targets, which for years had found their assets diverted to court costs. His successor, Attorney General George Jepsen, almost immediately swept hundreds of such nuisance cases from the books. Moving into the U.S. Senate, Mr. Blumenthal brought all his vices as Attorney General with him and soon acquired a reputation as Connecticu...

“A budget deal that closely resembles the 2011 budget agreement,” will be good for what ails Connecticut, said Martin Looney, the President Pro Tem in the Connecticut Senate, according to an NBC Connecticut story . “A budget deal that closely resembles the 2011 budget agreement might be needed in 2017,” said Mr. Looney. What ails Connecticut is excessive spending, pretty much everyone in the state now agrees – even Governor Dannel Malloy, who is responsible for both the largest and the second largest tax increases in state history. The first of Mr. Malloy’s tax increases was a not inconsiderable part of the 2011 budget deal that Mr. Looney would apply as a curative to Connecticut’s continuing ailments. Connecticut’s three major tax increases, the first promulgated during the administration of Governor Lowell Weicker, father of Connecticut’s income tax, served as political balm to union friendly governors and legislators. The tax increases relieved politicians of the necessity of...

We have passed the barrier to the New Year. We are leaving behind the old year and, with it, an eight year old national Democratic administration. President Barack Obama has left the stage snapping and growling – at Israel, among others . The question of the day is: How will things shape up in the New Year? An old saying has it, let no man count himself favored by fortune before he is tucked safely into his grave. Time always conceals under its wings some world-changing surprises. For instance, Russia will be celebrating the 100 th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in the New Year.  At the butt end of the 19 th century, very few people could have imagined six decades of Communist rule. The rule mentioned above – don’t count your chickens before they hatch – applies as well to the new administration, which will not officially begin until January 14. The truth is no one knows what will happen, until it happens. Donald Trump has been comfortable most of his life inve...

Over the past 25 years, Connecticut has increased taxes by leaps and bounds. The first leap began when then Independent Governor Lowell “The Maverick” Weicker muscled through the General Assembly an income tax measure. Governor Dannel Malloy increased taxes twice. During his first term, he and the Democrat dominated General Assembly imposed on the state the largest tax increase in its history; and this was followed during his second term by the second largest tax increase in state history. Yet, despite all this new revenue flowing into state coffers, non-partisan budget analysts inform us that the budget deficit during the current fiscal year ending last June is $170 million. Looking forward to fiscal year 2017-18, the legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Fiscal Analysis (OFA) has projected a deficit of about $1.3 billion. The budget deficit that had occasioned the introduction of the Weicker income tax was about $1.5 billion. The income tax itself was a permissive flag that inv...

A solution to a problem that does not solve the problem but instead creates in the public mind the appearance of a solution is often a useful political gambit. This appears to be the case with “Casey’s Law,” a non-solution that saves politicians the trouble of bruising their knuckles on the destructive policies they support – such as sanctuary cities. It is a fiction that there are only a limited number of sanctuary cities in Connecticut. The truth is – the entire state is a sanctuary state.

Connecticut’s income tax – read: license to spend – is now 25 years old , and celebrations are in order.   Just kidding. No one at this point feels inclined to celebrate a destructive measure that has made the state indistinguishable from other spendthrift, high tax states. Views on the income tax have changed only slightly since it was pumped through the General Assembly by then Governor Lowell Weicker – a gasbag, Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell called him -- and his accomplices both in the legislature and in Connecticut’s media. Mr. Weicker vetoed three non-income tax budgets before the deed had been accomplished. One of the most prominent signs carried by income tax protesters following the long night of the knives was this one -- “CUT THE FAT.”

Former Governor Lowell Weicker has been dragged out of mothballs by Neil Vigdor in The Connecticut Post to offer comment on the lamentable and Weicker-like Donald Trump. “’Out of 350 million people, we’re left with Donald Trump? You’ve got to be kidding me,’ said former Gov.  Lowell Weicker  Jr., an estranged Republican who has butted heads with Trump. ‘I think it’s the last act in what has been a long string of Republicans destroying themselves. I suspect after this election there will be a total reformation of the party.’” “Estranged Republican” is a delicate touch. During his last year in the U.S. Senate, Mr. Weicker managed to compile an Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) rating twenty points higher than that of U.S. Senator Chris Dodd. The abrasive Republican continually abused his own party as a foil to ingratiate himself with Democrats, who outnumber Republicans in his state by a two to one ratio, a case of mathematics determining political orientation....

When Governor Dannel Malloy first came into office in 2011, there were boisterous rejoicings all around. Finally, after two Republican governors and an odd fish, Lowell Weicker, who won the governorship on his own party line, Democrats had a Governor they could call their own. On entering office, Mr. Malloy raised taxes, as had the odd fish before him. Mr. Weicker sired Connecticut’s income tax, after which most editorial pages in the state crowed their hearty approval. Taxes are good, and one can never have too much of a good thing. Whenever a budget deficit appeared on the horizon, Democrats raised their old tattered rhetorical flag: Connecticut does not have a spending problem; it has a revenue problem, the obvious solution to which was and is – tax increases. The Malloy tax boost was the largest in state history. During his second term in office, Mr. Malloy, in concert with dominant Democrats in the General Assembly, repeated his performance. By that time, state union advances...