Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Progressives have for some time been in the habit of calling tax receipts “investments.” Governor Dannel Malloy, who has proposed a thirty year, one hundred billion investment in infrastructure repair, is Connecticut’s chief investment broker. The term is borrowed from Wall Street and glows with the promise of a handsome return on the investment. Naturally, the over-hyped return usually is slender; the bulk of investments in education, for instance, are absorbed in salary and benefit payments to teachers and administrators. When a government taxes its citizenry and invests the tax revenue in various projects, it is moving a bucket of money from the deep end of the pool and dumpling it into the shallow end of the pool. The drawing and dumping, it should be noted, does not raise the water level in the pool. The pool, in other words, is no richer in water after the getting and spending transactions have been completed. Government, despite what most people have been told, is not a wealt...

There will be time, there will be time  To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet… Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions And for a hundred visions and revisions Before the taking of a toast and tea. These lines, clipped from T.S. Eliot’s poem The Love-Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock , might easily describe the “visions and revisions” of Connecticut’s here-again, gone-again budget deficits. Kevin Lembo – so far, Connecticut’s straight-shooting Comptroller – revised his deficit estimate early in March by $40 million, not the only revision in Governor Dannel Malloy’s second term. The boost in the deficit figure, Mr. Lembo said, was the result in part of an over-estimation of revenue the state had expected to collect from capital gains taxes paid through the personal income tax.

Despite Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain’s sunny view of his prospects, it is not too soon to catch a peek at what an Obama presidency might be like. The word “might” here is used advisedly because there is much that is unknown about Sen. Barack Obama. Also, there is much known that has not dripped through the semi-permeable membrane of a dishonest and partisan media . Most of the media endorsements of Obama revolve around hope: Centrists hope he’s centrist; progressives hope he is progressive; the few conservatives that have backed Obama’s candidacy hope that he is only kidding about all that redistribution stuff. Many of Obama’s stated positions, as is usual with most politicians, have escape clauses in them. Some hope that, once in office, Obama will be able to revive a lost Camelot. “I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them,” Caroline Kennedy said. “But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who c...

In case there is anyone in the world other than Chris Dodd or Barney Frank who does not yet understand why Wall Street crashed, the Brits , as usual, can explain it all in five minutes and still leave you laughing.

So, we have a business meltdown. Who does it help or hurt, Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. John McCain? This is a devilish question, but we are in the midst of a presidential campaign. Horns and cloven feet are everywhere. In American politics, who fashions the best narrative wins. We all like a good yarn. A yarn is a story that sells, one that nestles nicely in our frame of reference, a story that confirms what we have always suspected. Others, most effectively the Financial Times of London, have suggested that Alan Greenspan is responsible for both the tech bubble and the housing bubble that has now broken over our heads. But the current controversy undoubtedly helps Obama, because he has successfully presented himself to the voting public as an agent of change and, if we are in the pickle jar, we want to get out of it by the quickest possible route. Obama has managed to position himself on the side of the angels. He wants to overthrow the old order, the ancient regime that has brought on...