Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

"A little learning is a dang'rous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again” – Alexander Pope The following paragraph, which appeared in a Hartford Courant editorial, “ A Bad Bill Worsened , ” a day after April Fool’s Day, is itself more shallow than most of the assertions made by the paper in a previous thoughtless editorial : “The state is forgoing much-needed revenue — about $27 million a year at the current price level —that most drivers won't miss. This is money that could be used to balance the budget or to repair bridges and roads — an area the state is short on by $1.4 billion. Research indicates that poor roads increase maintenance costs. So pennies' worth of savings for drivers could mean millions of dollars in repair costs for the state.” The state -- by which we are to understand Governor Dannel Malloy and the Democratic dominated General Assembly but not,...

Henry Mencken, the great Baltimore sage and journalist, once defined democracy as that form of government in which “the people get what they want – good and hard.” What is that form of government in which the government gets what it wants, good and hard? We might call it Rellism, or Rowlandism, or Weickerism. This form of government was perfected by Lowell Weicker, but his Republican gubernatorial accolades have followed the former senator and governor faithfully in his rather large footsteps. The thing achieved perfection when Weicker, having shunned the prospect of an income tax in his campaign, then became governor and appointed as head of his Office of Policy Management William Cibes, who had run in and lost a primary as a pro-income tax candidate. Following this appointment, came the income tax, followed in turn by a decade long deluge of spending and a predictable seemingly endless bout of economic anemia. Elsewhere in the country during these years, the economy has been robust; ...