Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

This from the cut and run governor , the author of the two largest tax increases in state history, who refused to talk with Republicans about budget matters during his entire term in office which, God and the Devil willing, will soon be over: ’The Republicans were very proud of producing what they called a bipartisan budget, but I call it a Republican bipartisan budget,’ Malloy said. ‘And as soon as they got heat for making a decision, they want to cut and run. But not only do they want to cut and run, they want to cut and run and make the deficit worse. And what was the first thing they did? Raise taxes. Everything they said was a fraud and they admitted that when they raised taxes. And what’s the first thing after they raise taxes and get some heat over something? They want to come back and make the deficit worse. Sounds like other Republican governors from our state whose names I recognize.’” How do sensible reporters manage to keep a straight face when the governor pus...

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself” – Mark Twain Connecticut’s Excellence in Political Idiocy Commission (EPIC), located in Vernon, Connecticut – rents in Hartford, the state’s failing Capital city, the Commission found, were much too prohibitive -- this year has bestowed its uncoveted Dumbbell Award to Democrats in Connecticut’s General Assembly. There were, as always, runners-up. While Republicans in Connecticut have made gains in the General Assembly during the past few sessions, it is clear they have miles to go before they sleep. Following the most recent elections, Connecticut’s state Senate is now tied, 18-18, and Republicans have steadily made gains in the House.

There is only one Republican State Senator who voted against the Malloy-Sikorsky-Lockheed Martin-Governor Dannel Malloy deal, pompously called “Connecticut Strategic Investment Act.” That would be Senator Joe Markley , who most certainly is not against strategic investment. Like many conservatives, Markley believes that production should be directed by the needs of the market place – not by politicians operating hand in glove with mega companies to arrange deals profitable to both. Senator Markley thinks crony capitalism, not at all the same thing as strategic investment, is a bell sounding the death knell of business in Connecticut. Crony capitalism is at best a polite form of bribery.

It’s more than a whisper. Hartford, Connecticut’s capital city, already is bankrupt; no one as yet has bothered to read the last rites over the corpse. The city’s formal announcement of bankruptcy can be deduced from the math, and there is no quarreling with math, as Mr. Micawber, a character in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield , well knew: “"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds, nineteen shillings and six pence, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

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.

Governor Dannel Malloy has not been able to discover from cross-talk between his office and CEO of Aetna Insurance Company Mark Bertolini whether Aetna, following the company’s merger with Humana, will move its headquarters out of state. The resolution of this mystery is important because a removal of Aetna’s headquarters from Connecticut will reduce the state’s revenue stream. Should Aetna pull a GE on Mr. Malloy, Connecticut's notoriously out-of-balance budget will suffer yet another inconvenient battering – this on the eve of state elections. For this reason, efforts have been made to decipher the cryptic comments Mr. Bertolini earlier made to Aetna stockholders. Like the oracles of the “False Prophet Alexander” lampooned by the Roman satirist Lucian, which oracles were richly detailed but opaque, obscure and non-responsive, Mr. Bertolini’s statements  to his stockholders admit of several meanings. Their sense has befuddled both Mr. Malloy and Luke Bronin, the ...

Long ago in the post-Camelot era, President George Bush The Greater was indiscreet enough to promise during a presidential campaign, “Read my lips – no new taxes,” after which Mr. Bush proceeded to raise taxes. It was one of those moments that delighted gold-plated opposition research fellows in the Washington D.C. Wonderland. After the deed was done, Mr. Bush – and later, low tax Republicans – was kicked around the block for decades whenever a deficit raised its horned head in the beltway. Life went on. The federal debt increased at a rapid pace under both Presidents Bush The Lesser and Barack Obama . Mr. Obama has in seven years added $6.463 trillion to the national debt, at 55.4% the largest debt increase of the three presidents. By the end of his term in office, George W. Bush had doubled the debt passed along to him by the Clinton administration, adding $5.849 trillion to Clinton’s $5.8 trillion.

Malloy budget already in red It’s been some time coming, but Governor Dannel Malloy, now tripping around the state selling his “austere” budget, is showing signs that he has been mugged by reality. He says it himself , bluntly and without the usual sugar topping: “… there is a certain reality. The nation’s gross national product last quarter grew by .7 percent – .7 percent. And there has been volatility in the stock market going back to June of last year. And that revenue is falling, not rising. That’s the reality.” The tax-increase solution to disappearing revenues has been tried and found wanting. Numerous times during his two terms in office Mr. Malloy has been forced to rely on his rescission authority to sop-up the red ink in numerous budgets. Raising taxes, Mr. Malloy said at the somber gathering in Middletown, would be ill advised. Mr. Malloy already has imposed two massive tax increases on his tax bludgeoned state, and still death is knocking on Connecticut’s...

After paying court to Governor Dannel Malloy’s budget address, a eupeptic Republican noted that he sounded like Ronald Reagan. Another, unused to taking leaps of faith, said if only Mr. Malloy had done at the beginning of his term in office what he had said in his current budget address, we wouldn’t be in this fix. General Electric’s leave-taking may have served as a splash of cold water in Mr. Malloy’s face. Aetna, it appears, may be looking for an exit. Sikorsky has been sold, and other insurance companies, in part reacting to a failing Obamacare, are commingling in an effort to cut costs. More than a quarter of the total number of 893,851 active professional physicians reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation have now declined to participate in the new plans under the Affordable Care Act, a number of states have declined to set up exchanges, and UnitedHealth Group , the nation's largest health insurer, having lost more than $500 million on exchange plans, warned l...

William Butler Yeats Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity – William Butler Yeats The split in the national Republican Party on the right has been visible for months, while the split among Democrats on the left has not been as publicly evident. But it is there, rankling just beneath the surface of the Democratic Party, and every so often the horned beast shows itself.

Q: President Pro Tem of the State House of Representatives Martin Looney appeared recently on “Face the State” with Dennis House and seemed – though in politics, appearances may be deceiving – to have repudiated progressivism… A: I don’t think he’s ready to give up on progressivism just yet. You cannot have strongman government without progressivism. He did point out a major, perhaps fatal, failing. Q: You quoted what he said in one of your columns.

The juxtapositions are jarring. According to one story , Governor Dannel Malloy has spent “$1 Million To Lure 16 Jobs to Stamford.” Mr. Malloy is lending MC Credit Partners $1 million at a two percent interest rate, and the company will be able to convert half of the loan into a gift “if it adds 10 people by 2018 and maintains 26 employees through 2020. If it only adds five workers, $250,000 of the loan will be forgiven.” Connecticut -- for all practical purposes, a one-party state -- has now become a gambling den for crony capitalists. The sixteen jobs for which Mr. Malloy paid nearly a million were filched from New York City, whose crony capitalist governor, Mario Cuomo, would happily pay an equivalent amount on jobs he may in the future manage to filch from Connecticut. Mr. Cuomo recently put in a bid for General Electric (GE) jobs after the company’s CEO, Jeff Immelt, expressed profound dissatisfaction with Connecticut’s chronically out of balance and business-hostile...

The two most abhorrent but inescapable duties of politicians are: 1) selling themselves or their states to prospective investors, and 2) raising money for political campaigns. Connecticut politicians who do not like dunking for dollars hope to relieve themselves of the second chore through the public financing of campaigns. Whether or not the first is a disagreeable chore depends upon the individual politician and the condition of his product.

The Malloy-Sharkey-Looney budget was hammered out behind closed doors by the three gentlemen just before Governor Dannel Malloy was to begin a European trip, ostensibly to convince businesses in Europe to transfer some of their operations to tax-plagued Connecticut. Paris and Germany were on the itinerary. Paris is lovely this time of year. Many moons ago, when  François Hollande was installed as President, the famous French actor Gérard Depardieu turned in his passport and moved to a small Belgian village about 24 miles from France, leaving behind as he went his malison on M. Hollande, the first socialist President since François Mitterrand  left office in 1995.  The richest man in the country, Bernard Arnault, the CEO and chief shareholder of the luxury behemoth LVMH, had earlier moved to Belgium to escape the confiscatory tax Mr. Hollande levied on France’s One-Percenters.

Some commentators, "Morning Joe" among them, may have missed the snarling irony of the moment. Governor Dannel Malloy, a frequent guest on "Morning Joe," will soon approve the Democratic Party budget, the most progressive budget in state history and Connecticut’s second most expensive budget in state history. Mr. Malloy’s first budget, launched at a time when his state was caught in the toils of a malingering recession, was a tad more expensive. In passing, one may note that Connecticut, unlike all the other states in the union, still has not recovered the jobs lost in the crippling Bush/Obama recession. Is it not possible that businesses in and outside the state are reacting to Connecticut’s counterproductive progressive economic policies? Three of the state’s largest job providers – Travelers, Aetna and General Electric – seem to think so.

 Mother Aetna Heaves A Sigh Connecticut’s House on Monday withdrew its tax infused budget shortly after three large companies – Aetna, General Electric and Travelers– hinted ever so gently they might move some operations out of state if lawmakers did not reconsider the Malloy-Sharkey-Looney budget. Reconsideration followed almost immediately, as legislators knees began to buckle.