Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Ours is a government practiced in the art of wolf avoidance. The wolf is now at the door, and even the most complaisant of Connecticut’s politicians are beginning to feel the leg tingles that swept over gabmeister Chris Mathews, when it became clear to him that then Sen. Barack Obama could be president. First former President George Bush and now President Barack Obama have been standing at the federal pawn shop window throwing money out to the masses. It is no wonder that a crowd of pensioners have gathered, empty hands outstretched, to rake in the favors. Bush favored bailing out badly stung banks, hoping the money he was throwing at bankers might be leant by them to worthy borrowers, thus making its way into the marketplace, priming the magic pump that waters us all with prosperity. This did not happen for many reasons. Wary bankers were still feeling the impress of the thumbscrews that Sen. Chris Dodd, head of the congressional banking committee, and Barney Frank, congress’ most acc...

The time is coming when Governor Jodi Rell will no longer be able to address serious problems in Connecticut with the usual bromides. Rell, as we all know, has been a caretaker governor ever since the jailer slammed the prison door shut on former Governor John Rowland, who was in many respects also a caretaker governor. Caretaker governors are those that take care of the permanent government. Rowland swept into office on a wave of intense anger mixed with contempt for the previous governor, Lowell Weicker, father of the state’s income tax, an incubus that Connecticut’s sister state, Massachusetts, soon may attempt to shed in a ballot initiative vote. In his first campaign, Rowland promised to axe the tax but eventually succumbed, as many unprincipled (read: pragmatic) politicians do, to power brokers, mostly Democrats, with whom he quickly came to terms. The mutually beneficial deal Rowland struck with the prevailing power structure was this: There would be no serious spending or tax c...

In a rational universe Chester’s First Selectman Tom Marsh’s idea might be bruited about in the state legislature; it certainly would not be rejected out of hand. Mr. Marsh fresh from a recent conversation with Senate President Pro Tem Donald Williams, wants Connecticut to know that for the past year he has been promoting “a policy that allows towns to keep a portion of the sales and income tax that is generated.” An earlier idea promoted by several of Connecticut’s mayors, that selected big cities should be permitted to levy sales taxes, is the wrong idea, in Marsh’s view, because it would encourage the flight of capital from city to suburb. After being told by Williams that there was no magic money tree in the basement of the Capitol building from which dollars could be plucked and given to the towns, Marsh, David facing Goliath, slung his proposal at Williams, writing later in an letter to a newspaper that it was his idea to shift to towns “control of a portion of the tax revenue” f...