Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

It was Rahm Emanuel, then consigliore to the Obama administration, now mayor of crime infested Chicago, who once reminded us that clever Harvard educated politicians and street organizers should never let a crisis go to waste. Progressives in the General Assembly have wholeheartedly adopted Emanuel’s view. In his most recent budget, likely unbalanced, Malloy will present to the General Assembly a progressive measure that would “shift $407.6 million, nearly one-third of the annual cost of municipal school teachers’ pensions, onto cities and towns — a move that would hit the state’s wealthiest communities the hardest,”  according to CTMirror . So some say. It is worth noting that the “progressive tax by other means” will draw down municipal resources, weaken town government and pave the way to a false solution: the replacement of town governments with a regional structure overseen by a state that, unlike municipal governments, is chronically incapable of balancing its ...

“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth” – George Orwell, 1984 The “constant sniping and cherry-picking bad news from the good” has given Connecticut Speaker of the House of Representatives Brendan Sharkey heart palpitations. In a Hartford Courant column , Mr. Sharkey writes: “Rather than attempt to establish themselves as credible participants in our state's democratic process, the Republicans will say or do anything in an attempt to gain a political advantage, no matter how harsh or misleading, and without regard to the negative effects their behavior has on Connecticut's economy or its future.

Progressive Governor Dannel Malloy is in the midst of building “a new economy in Connecticut.” So Mr. Malloy claimed in an address during the Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson, Jackson, Bailey fund raising dinner, soon to be renamed. Democrats only recently discovered that Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Jackson were slavers. A proposal to rename the annual event was made following progressive firebrand U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s key note address before assembled Democrats. The names of Mr. Jackson, a notorious Indian killer, and Mr. Jefferson are to be scrubbed from the marque event, Democrats announced four days before the Fourth of July, also known as Independence Day, so named after Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.

What a difference a campaign season makes. It was not so long ago – in March 2012 – that Governor Dannel Malloy was valiantly trying to tamp down efforts among General Assembly progressives to raise the minimum wage in Connecticut to $9.25 an hour from $8.25. A story issued from Rick Green of the Hartford Courant: “ Quassy Stands To Lose If Minimum Wage Rises: Even 50-Cent Hike Could Cost Over $150K, Owner Says .” Mr. Green interviewed a minimum wage employer, George Frantzis of Quassy Amusement Park on Lake Quassapaug in Middlebury, Connecticut, who pointed out that the prospective boost in the minimum wage would force him to take measures. Mr. Frantiz told Mr. Green that a minimum wage increase would force Quassy to “cut back on recently approved plans to expand a water park. There would be fewer raises for returning employees,” not to mention business lost from the absence of a water park.

How much should a job cost? When jobs are purchased by the governors of states that over-regulate the so called free market, which becomes less free the more regulations are piled on regulations, using their tax structures to transfer money from tax payers and small businesses to larger more government savvy corporations too big to fail, the cost of a job can be very dear. President Barack Obama’s stimulus package, a scheme to gather taxes from the voiceless masses and pass them along to favored businesses and union groups, has simulated only the appetite of those in the federal government who consider it their business to soften the sharp edges of problems they themselves have have had a hand in creating. The inability of the Obama stimulus package to reduce the jobless rate in the United States is the surest indicator that the president’s plan has failed. When number crunchers toted up the amount of stimulus spent per job produced, they arrived at a figure of $278,000. In most ...