Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

"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...

A recent column in Citizen News brought forth letters and articles, information and misinformation.. Let’s correct some, starting with the luminaries’: Pres. Obama. Illegals are not provided for in our bills . Not so. There have been two amendments barring illegal aliens from being benefited by health-care, and both have been voted down. The independent Congressional Research Service says there are numerous loopholes in the bills which allow illegal immigrants to benefit. Example: Where one family member qualifies for inclusion, his whole family is included. If you like your policy, you can keep it,” repeated many times). Maybe, maybe not. . HR3200 provides that at the moment it becomes law, there will be no more enrollments in Medicare, and those who have lost their insurance for whatever reason will be put into Public Option. No choice. Congressman Christopher Murphy: “There’s no reason why members of Congress shouldn’t . . . choose between the public option and private plans ...

Economist Arthur Laffer in a beautiful column in the August 5 Wall Street Journal tells why, though we need improvement, we don’t need health-care reform. Laffer starts off with the proposition that people like their health care; 70% of them are satisfied with it. Pollster Scott Rasmussen writes that in early August, 68% of American voters rated their insurance as “good or excellent,” with 74% rating the quality of their health care as good or excellent, and 50% believing that if ObamaCare becomes law, the quality of health care will decline (WSJ August 7). Polling last February, Rasmussen found that by 2 to 1, no matter how bad things are, Congress can always make them worse. Then why not give up the idea of reforming health care and just repair it? Some 55% think it could be improved. The problem is not quality but cost, which is so high that it certainly means higher taxes, probably inflation, and conceivably even bankruptcy. Medicare has unfunded obligations amounting to $36 ...

Cindy Sheehan , who very early on adopted with respect to the war in Iraq a position espoused much later by U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd and Barack Obama – war bad, Bush bad, troops out now – has decided to run against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , according to the authoritative San Francisco Chronicle. Ralph Nader popped up in Waterbury to regale the folk there with his shopworn message: Bush bad, Barack bad, McCain bad, corporations bad, Nader good. The people in Waterbury might have been satisfied if Nader, railing against incompetent bureaucrats, had aimed a few of his arrows at the boobs in state government who made it impossible to pass by Waterbury on route 84 in less than four hours. At his best, Nader sounds like Leon Trotsky on hashish crying out to the captains of industry “Get thee to a Gulag”; at his worst he sounds like former president Jimmy Carter , nominated by numerous political watchers as the worst president of the Twentieth century. Has it been that long since Jimmy fo...