Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

George Orwell said that the most difficult thing for a writer to see were events occurring right under his nose. The same holds true for voters. For many of us, voting is a duty and an obligation, like going to church on Sunday. But how many of us remember the homilies on Tuesday? Perhaps even the minister has forgotten his invocations by then. One should not render oneself unconscious before voting. Look before you leap, think before you vote. We know that it will not do to overlook recent history, because recent history is armed and dangerous. It might be instructive to approach Connecticut’s economic problems from a “can’t do” perspective. What are the reigning “can’t-do’s” in Connecticut just now?

Some time ago, Republican leader in the State House Themis Klarides reminded a reporter that she was Greek. Her first name, she said, meant “justice.” That was almost right. Themis was an ancient Greek Titaness, the “lady of good counsel,” a personification of divine order, fairness, law, natural law and custom. The name Themis literally means “that which is put in place.” The symbols by which Themis is known are the scales of justice, tools in the ontological order that assure balance. Balance is the baseline in the Greek cosmos according to which right order is measured. To know whether a thing is right and just – morally, legally, ethically, religiously, secularly, atheistically -- one must have more than a nodding acquaintance with reality. Idle dreaming is a fatal threat to right order. Political visions – modern politics is consumed with visions the ancient Greeks might have considered nightmares – are justifiable and practical only when they take into account the rea...

Overheard in the MidRoad Diner during a meeting of the Reformers Club The difference between God and Governor Malloy --“God is less concerned than [Dannel] Malloy when people question Him.” Those early body-building pics of Republican House leader Themis Klarides circulating in the desk drawers of oppo-researchers -- “I’m still waiting for one of Connecticut’s opinionators to write, maybe in a column, that Klarides can easily bench-press many of her political opponents. She likes sports, contact sports too. Otherwise, why would she have gotten involved in politics?”

President Donald Trump does not like the press he is receiving. The press – we now call it the media, because bloggers and ideologues with knives in their brains have been folded into it – convinced of its moral rectitude, begs to differ. Trump’s press notices would be very much different if he were the media, and his twitter activity has been taken by some as an attempt to offset this lamentable deficiency. Trump has been setting the day’s press calendar by tweet-twerking. He is, his Democratic and Republican opponents insist, the presidential equivalent of the-guy-in-a-bathrobe-in-his-mom’s-cellar turning the world upside down by loosing upon it nuclear tipped declarations. To Trump, tweets may be no more than a new colorful crayon in his box of tricks. To the contra-Trump media, they are a threat that must be disposed of, as the sixties radicals used to say, “by any means necessary.”

The usual gubernatorial campaign in Connecticut begins with brave platitudes and ends, once office has been achieved, with whimpering platitudes. We recall a triumphant Governor Lowell Weicker warning during his gubernatorial campaign that instituting an income tax in the midst of a recession would be like “pouring gas on a fire,” then, having achieved office, hiring as his Office of Policy Management Director Bill Cibes, who ran an honest but losing Democratic primary campaign by agitating for an income tax. Before you could say, “Let’s pour gas on the fire,” Connecticut had its income tax. State businesses have taken note of the ungovernable growth in spending and now have their eyes fixed on the exit signs.

From this point forward, most of the media releases from the Malloy administration will be in the form of a hidden confession, followed by an unintentionally amusing uptick. After an announcement by Mother Aetna that the company is moving its headquarters from Connecticut to another state, possibly New York, CTMirror unfurled its headline: “ Aetna CEO: HQ move to have ‘minimal impact’ on most Hartford employees ." The headline over a Wall Street Journal editorial was somewhat darker: “ Connecticut’s Tax Comeuppance: With the rich tapped out, the state may resort to Puerto Rico bonds .

The trouble with bad manners, Bill Buckley used to say, is that they sometimes lead to murder. This is true in more than a metaphorical sense. Murder, in addition to being a crime, also is a serious breach in morals and manners. Frothing over with Democratic bumper sticker propaganda, Democratic State Representative Matt Lesser, addressing Republican Party opposition to what has been called “a pay equity bill” let loose on Republicans. Opposition to the bill, Mr. Lesser said, is “rooted in two things: ‘We’ve always done it,’ and bigotry.” Unfortunately for Mr. Lesser, Republican leader in the House Themis Klarides was within ear shot.

“First Five” agreements between Governor Dannel Malloy and preferred companies such as Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc., thought to be a “ major player in Connecticut's fledgling bioscience industry ,” are non-enforced whenever Mr. Malloy chooses not to enforce paper tiger contracts. About a year ago, Alexion moved from Cheshire into its new headquarters in New Haven, the 23 mile move having been facilitated by the usual “First Five” contractual agreement. The package delivered to Alexion’s doorstep by a grateful governor included a $6 million grant, a subsidized $20 million loan transformed into a gift provided Alexion had 650 workers in Connecticut by 2017, and tax credits worth in the neighborhood of $25 million.

Is there yet another tax hike in our near future? Thinking people think so. Republican leaders in the General Assembly hit the tax increase chord repeatedly in the recently concluded elections, and apparently voters responded to it. The Republicans picked up seats in the Senate, which is now a fifty-fifty proposition, 18 Democrats and 18 Republicans. The GOP also gained seats in the House. In a recent TV interview, Governor Dannel Malloy said he would not rule out another tax hike, more budget cuts were in the offing, and recurring deficits were the fault of his predecessors. Parsing Mr. Malloy at this point should not be difficult. During his first campaign, Mr. Malloy said Connecticut shoulders would have to lift the weight of deficits caused by other governors, but the burden would be fairly distributed between cuts and tax increases. Two tax increases, the largest and the second largest in state history, demonstrate beyond doubt that taxpayers have shouldered the...

Governor Dannel Malloy’s brief flirtation with Republican leaders in the Democrat dominated General Assembly is now officially over. The engagement ring has been repossessed, and we are back to square one; or, as Yogi Berry might put it, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Shortly after Mr. Malloy agreed to accept the most recent budget presented to him by chastened leaders in the General Assembly, Republican House Minority Leader Themis Klarides expressed her dismay in a Facebook posting: “Despite what they claim, the final budget proposed by the Democrat majority does not include real structural changes necessary to change the course of business in Connecticut. It simply sets us up for tax increases after the elections in November.”

The headline – “No Tax Increase Expected” – was unintentionally misleading. Plenty of people in Connecticut expect tax increases – or, at the least, revenue enhancers – sometime after elections in Connecticut have been put to bed. In our fair Republic, governors propose and legislatures dispose of budgets. Recurring deficits demonstrate that neither Mr. Malloy, the first Democratic governor since the Bill O’Neill administration, nor the Democratic dominated General Assembly have been adept at writing budgets.  The lede to the story in the Hartford paper was accurate: “Governor Dannel P.  Malloy will not propose tax increases next week during his annual budget speech at the opening of the legislative session, his spokesman said Wednesday.”

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.