Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

“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.

Governor Dannel Malloy’s economic policy does not work. But he is in good company. The nonprofit health-insurance companies set up to help people enroll in Obamacare are now failing. Mr. Malloy’s progressive economic policy may be summed up this way: State government serves as a transformer, collecting money from the real economy and disbursing it according to need, from those who have to those who have not. Karl Marx laid down the law of a socialist economy more than a hundred and fifty years ago: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” In enlightened countries, the job is done without destroying either capital or capitalists. “The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope,” Marx said. Progressive ambitions in the United States have been more modest. They proceed from Matthew (19:20-24) rather than Marx, and their adherents in the United States so far have been content to await a final felicity at the final judgment:

Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell notes in a recent column that Connecticut’s constitutional cap on spending has over the years been easily surmounted by governors and legislators determined to spend money. And indeed, spending has spiraled in the state. Governor William O’Neill's last pre-income tax budget was about $7.5 billion. Connecticut’s current biennial budget is hovering around $40 billion, and the Democratic dominated General Assembly has not yet finished tinkering with it. By broadening the sales tax while reducing the sales tax rate and removing from under the spending cap pension payments for state workers, progressive magicians in the General Assembly are now in the process of transmuting a multi- million dollar deficit into a multi-million dollar surplus. Spending in Connecticut has tripled within the space of four governors, one of whom was independent Governor Lowell Weicker, the father of Connecticut’s income tax.

At a press conference on Access Health CT (Obamacare) , Governor Dannel Malloy was asked for the hundredth time whether he intends to run for governor. Weary of having to handle the question gingerly, Mr. Malloy told the gaggle of reporters assembled for the event something like this:  If I answer “Yes” to your question, the campaign will begin at that moment. And once a campaign begins in earnest, I will lose control of the sub campaign, which is the event you are attending right now. On this occasion, I can say what I like without having to wend my way through a briar patch of questions you and the Republicans might consider more important than the possibility of a soda tax -- which, by the way, I do not favor.

When Governor Dannel Malloy first came into office, some commentators who had paid close attention to his campaign assumed he was ready to vigorously attack spending. He had often enough during his campaign batted around the catch phrase “fair share.” It was generally understood that everyone in Connecticut would, under the Malloy dispensation, be expected to contribute his “fair share” in taxes and give-backs, and most people expected, after the new governor had imposed on taxpayers the largest tax increase in state history, that the consumption side of government would see proportional reductions in spending. The tax increase was immediate and, some would argue, devastating to an economy in the grip of a prolonged recession: See President Jack Kennedy’s speech to the Economic Club of New York. Mr. Malloy’s prospective savings, as it turned out, would be distant and amorphous. Who could have guessed, as the Malloy campaign rolled out, that the governor would soon become...

   One of the founders of the American Republic, James Madison, wrote in Federalist No. 57 that the U.S. Congress would not likely frame laws that would be injurious to the general public because the members of Congress also would be affected by the same laws. The Congress, he wrote, “can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society.” But the U.S. Congress, the Marie Antoinette of legislatures, has long since learned how to escape laws that members of Congress inflict upon others.

Skirmishing for the 2014 elections has already begun. Two Republican candidates have already given firm indications that they plan to run against the Democratic nominee for governor, most likely present Governor Dannel Malloy, although Mr. Malloy has not yet made a formal announcement. Victory in an election depends in large part on the prevailing circumstances of the moment, and we simply do not know what the prevailing circumstances will be in 2014. But some things will have changed. President Barack Obama, very much underestimated by Republican prognosticators before the 2012 elections, will not be on the mid-term election ticket. Republicans may recall the now amusing predictions of Karl Rove and others just before the votes were tallied. Former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney was supposed to have edged out the sitting president, according to the calculations of Republican number crunches such as Dick Morris.

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act ” -- George Orwell George Orwell, like Jonathan Swift before him, is one of those large writers who simply straddle ideological categories. He was fortunate enough – or unfortunate enough, depending on one’s point of view – to have been born in what the ancient Chinese call “interesting times,” the bloody and totalitarian 20th century. The revolutionist speaking truth to power often appears among us with a rope braided by the reigning powers draped about his neck. He steps towards gallows with a wan smile on his face.

It happens to the best of presidents. Sometime during the second term of popular presidents, the American people begin to bid goodbye to their chief executive, at which point the president begins to think of his legacy and hires a ghost writer to memorialize his time in office for future generations. Ground is broken, if only in the president’s mind, for a future library. President Barack Obama is a popular, twice elected president. Some of his programs, however, never have been universally admired even within his own camp, which now begins to show stress fractures. Mr. Obama’s political methodology is, unsurprisingly, that of a left wing Chicago street organizer. During his presidency, Mr. Obama has spent an inordinate amount of time on the bully pulpit attempting to sell round pegs to square-hole purchasers in Congress. And he’s spent a great deal of money he does not have.

You know when an election in Connecticut is over when virtually all incumbent Democrats are re-elected to office, after having been fulsomely endorsed by much of the state’s left of center media, and when, several days after the election, bad news headlines begin to appear in Connecticut’s only state-wide newspaper : “State’s Medicaid Costs Soar, Projected Budget Deficit Attributed In Part to Expanded Coverage.” That headline appeared in a Hartford paper as a front page above the fold story a little less than two weeks after the election. According to the story, we discover that the state’s $365 million budget deficit “dates, in part, to two years ago when Connecticut became the first state to expand medical coverage to low-income adults as an early adopter of federal health care reform .” The federal health care reform program is Obamacare. The architects of Obamacare were careful to front load the program with alluring benefits; payments for the alluring benefits were deferred u...

Those opposed to Obamacare, virtually all Republicans, probably should have realized that the Supreme Court does not convene to decide political issues. On Thursday, a little less than a week before Independence Day – And here one can hear disappointed Republicans grumbling, “A day that will live in infamy…” – the Supreme Court adroitly stepped over the political puddle, leaving Obamacare, apart from some few minor adjustments, virtually intact. Republicans had argued that the mandate provision, which assigned a penalty for people or businesses that declined to bow their necks to the Obamacare scimitar, was unconstitutional. Should the court find the provision constitutional, it would herald in a new and ruinous doctrine; namely, that the federal government can order citizens to purchase a service or product, a power never before exercised by congress. The court decision said, in effect, that Congress had no constitutional authority to claim such power through appeal to the c...

The magisterium of the Hartford Courant -- its editorial board -- has issued a pronouncement on the matter of an interpretation of a federal bill by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius that would require Catholic institutions to assist in dispensing birth control pills and abortifacients. The ex-cathedra pronouncement from Courant editors opens with the following lede: “Roman Catholic protests against certain requirements of the health care reform law, though heartfelt, are misplaced. No one’s first amendments rights are being compromised, and – despite loud cries to the contrary – religious liberty is not in jeopardy…” There are at the moment numerous suits filed by Catholic prelates and institutions challenging the constitutionality of Ms. Sebelius’ interpretation of the Obamacare bill. The Supreme Court is due to rule on the bill before its session closes at the end of June. The Obamacare bill very well may be unconstitutional, in which case the entire ...

Sen. Mitch McConnell puts it in a nutshell : “Americans are already outraged at the fact that Democrat leaders took their eyes off the ball. Rushing the process on a partisan line makes the situation even worse. “Americans were told the purpose of reform was to reduce the cost of health care. “Instead, Democrat leaders produced a $2.5 trillion, 2,074-page monstrosity that vastly expands government, raises taxes, raises premiums, and wrecks Medicare. “And they want to rush this bill through by Christmas — one of the most significant, far-reaching pieces of legislation in U.S. history. They want to rush it. “And here’s the most outrageous part: at the end of this rush, they want us to vote on a bill that no one outside the Majority Leader’s conference room has even seen. “That’s right. The final bill we’ll vote on isn’t even the one we’ve had on the floor. It’s the deal Democrat leaders have been trying to work out in private.”

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 ...