Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Deducing Governor Ned Lamont’s budget proposal from meetings he has held with Democrat leaders in the General Assembly is a little bit like deducing Shakespeare from lamb chops. Here is Senate Pro Tem Martin Looney   on their talks, according to a piece in CTMirror : “’We did talk a little bit, just in general, about the nature of the sales tax and the fact it was structured when our economy was somewhat entirely dependent upon products and goods, and now it’s heavily dependent upon services,’ Looney said. ‘We did say, basically, the two options to address the sales tax are, one, a base expansion, and the second is a rate increase.’”

National Democrats are, ever so gently, following socialist Pied Piper U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders back to the cave.   Connecticut Democrats, progressive to the bone, are likely to go along for the ride. The Pied Piper, it will be recalled, was hired by the mayor of Hamlin to rid the town of rats, which he did by piping them an enchanting tune. The mayor of the town refused payment, and the Pied Piper later avenged himself by piping the town’s children to a cave, where they were never heard from again. There are two morals to the story: debts incurred must be paid, and the instruments of destruction you use against your enemies easily may be turned upon yourself. Forbes Magazine has examined the detailed Congressional Democrat tax hike plan. Many of us, including Newsweek magazine, have long concluded that " We Are All Socialists Now ."   The Democrat detailed plan includes, according to Forbes , an i ncrease in the top marginal income tax rate from 37 percent to 3...

Jim Powell asked in an eye-opening piece in Forbes magazine 67 months ago, “ How Did Rich Connecticut Morph Into One Of America's Worst Performing Economies ?" A partial answer, freighted with supportive data, has now been advanced in a piece commissioned by The Yankee Institute titled “ Above the Law: How Government Unions’ Extralegal Privileges Are Harming Public Employees, Taxpayers And The State ."  Everyone, both inside and outside the state, is intimately familiar with the bad news most of us have internally affirmed during the past few decades. Consider the rise in the Connecticut’s “fixed costs,” a fixed cost being one that can be reduced only by extraordinary, politically unlikely efforts: “In 2006, fixed costs constituted only 37 percent of the state’s budget; by 2018 that amount was 53 percent.” In 2016, the Census Bureau reported that Connecticut was one of only eight states to lose population. Fixed costs are strangling the state’s economy and pus...

Connecticut, as everyone who has been leaving it knows, is in a bad way. How bad is it? The state is still recovering from a recession that had ended elsewhere in the nation in June 2009. For eight years, we have been hobbling along and are now the only state in the nation that has yet to recover from the recession – which is, as everyone who has been leaving the state knows, a slowdown in business activity. There are two very good reasons why Connecticut has been so laggard: 1) Governor Dannel Malloy’s first tax increase, the largest in state history, and 2) Governor Malloy’s second tax increase, the second largest in state history. But then, we were forewarned.  Lowell Weicker did caution us during his campaign for governor that raising taxes in a recession would be like throwing gas on a fire, only a few months before he instituted his income tax, over the heated objections of a Republican Party rump in the General Assembly. When Weicker was met by the largest rally...

For all practical purposes, Mayor of Hartford Luke Bronin, a Democrat considering running for governor, has abdicated the position to which he was elected on January 1, 2016; this after having plainly said it would take him at least a full term, perhaps longer, to bring Hartford out of the red. It takes at least one political term, possibly two, to raise a sunken aircraft carrier from the depths. In both Hartford and its General Assembly, Democrats have for decades been winking at metastasizing labor costs driven upwards by state employee union demands. How can you tell when union salary and pension costs are extravagant? Easy. They are excessive when labor costs cannot be sustained by a shrinking revenue market.

Democrats in Connecticut do not have an identity crisis. If it is proper to judge a political party by its programs, they are progressives. Some Democrats, of course, are more progressive than others, but what Generalissimo Richard Nixon said of the Republican Party of his day – “We are all  now” – is certainly true of the Democratic Party in the northeast. The essence of Keynesianism is government control of the economy, usually through regulations that large enterprises may avoid by beseeching the government for special favors and deferments. What former President Dwight Eisenhower used to decry as “the military industrial complex” has been broadened in our day to include a convoluted collusion between large capital rich firms and/or state and federal governments made possible through regulations that may be waved for a fee or a consideration.

“What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright” – Samuel Gompers When asked what unions wanted, Samuel Gompers – who is to unions what George Washington, the flag and apple pie is to America --replied, “More.” However, it should be noted that Mr. Gompers – no socialist he -- also said about profits, “The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.” Mr. Gompers disdained pacifists and Wobblies. Connecticut employee unions want more of what they have -- higher salaries and more benefits. The only open question among union members in the Nutmeg State is: Are they likely to reach the point of temporary satiation more quickly with Governor Dannel...

These posting are slightly premature, but at some point in the near future, only 11 years, we shall be celebrating the great lady’s 100th birthday. Maggie Thatcher – who broke more ceilings in the British Empire than any other modern post-feminist gal – was the head of Britain’s Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990, an astonishing accomplishment in itself, and Prime Minister of Britain for 11 years from 1979 to 1990, the last year the governance of Britain made any sense at all. Here is the great lady having fun with the guys, Maggie being Maggie: And here she is on budgeting by borrowing. Members of Connecticut's General Assembly should take notice: Here is Maggie dispensing with the British equivalent of Jay Carney, bidding good bye to her friends and opponents:

A newspaper reports that Republican leaders John McKinney and Larry Cafero, both of whom have professed interest in running for governor, are once again being shut out of budget negotiations by Governor Dannel Malloy. This is getting to be a habit. During Mr. Malloy’s first budget -- By the way, has Mr. Malloy’s budget EVER been in balance? – the governor unceremoniously showed the door to Republicans. Mr. Malloy brought Republicans back to the table on two occasions: during a special session, when Mr. Malloy needed some help balancing his chronically out of balance budget, and during negotiations on a gun restriction bill following the mass murders in Sandy Hook.

The trouble with Connecticut Republicans has always been the same: There is no Maggie Thatcher among them. The pre-Thatcherite Tory Party in Britain resembles to a “T” the “go along to get along” Republican Party in Connecticut. The late Mrs. Thatcher wrote in her memories, “Almost every postwar Tory victory had been won on slogans such as ‘Britain Strong and Free’ or 'Set the People Free.' But in the fine print of policy, especially in government, the Tory Party merely pitched camp in the long march to the left. It never seriously tried to reverse it… The welfare state? We boasted of spending more money than Labor, not of restoring people to independence and self-reliance.”

The good news is that Bain Capital, associated with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, was not asked by the owners of Deco Products of Iowa to intervene and streamline its processes at a time when the company was suffering business losses. Deco has for more than six decades been in the family of Elizabeth Esty, a Democrat in true blue Connecticut running for the U.S. Congress in the 5 th District. The further good news is that, owing to a mishap involving the FBI in Chris Donovan’s campaign for the same position, Ms. Esty prevailed over Mr. Donovan in a democratic primary. Mr. Donovan’s political parts were assembled in a union hall. One can only imagine what hash he would have made of Mrs. Esty had it been known during the Democratic primary that Mrs. Esty is the beneficiary of a family owned company that, way back in 2009 when times were tough, laid off 53 of about 225 NON UNIONIZED workers.

January came in like a lion and went out like a lion, leaving behind in its wake a pile of snow and bone chilling winds that would make even the most fervent acolyte of global warming curse Al Gore, the high priest of the cult. GW cultists these days insist on calling their peculiar faith “climate change,” which is probably what Mr. Mark Twain had in mind when he said, “If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a minute; it’ll change,” or words to that effect. A neighbor across the lake, Tony Procrastinate (not his real name) who has just given up the last of the New Year’s resolutions he made at the beginning of the month, insists that Winter dumped three feet of snow on his property, and it is pointless to try to convince him that his snow footage is an accumulative figure, the present couple of feet having been added to the unshoveled couple of feet left over from the last storm. Mr. Procrastinate neglected to clean up his property last time because… well, he had turn...