Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Energy – particularly those forms of energy that cause green energy proponents to wrinkle their noses in dismay – is quickly becoming in Connecticut the new tobacco, a reviled product susceptible to punitive taxation. The object of punitive taxation is to drive up the price of the undesirable product so as to make it less competitive with other more desirable products, even if the more desirable product is in its larval stage. The Democratic dominated General Assembly may pass just such a tax on nuclear energy for three reasons: 1) Green utopians and their facilitators in the General Assembly don’t like nuclear energy; 2) they much prefer energy produced by wind turbines, except when the turbines grate on the aesthetic sensibilities of their constituents ; 3) they believe all things powered by oil, gas and coal -- cars especially -- are environmentally destructive; and 4) true utopians, they hope to construct out of whole cloth a better society by using the tax code to drive from a q...

The legal ball that state Senator-elect Joe Markley tossed into the Superior Court has been batted by Judge Henry Cohen back to the Department of Public Utilities Control (DPUC). Mr. Markley, striking a blow for Connecticut citizens and good government, filed a suit in October against the DPUC for having permitted a fee to appear on energy bills that anyone with half a brain would recognize as a disguised tax. In 2000, the state legislature initiated energy deregulation in Connecticut. Having made inquiries of the state’s two largest energy distributors concerning the cost of deregulation, legislators were told the bill would run about $1.7 billion. Rather than raise the money for deregulation though a forthright tax, it was decided to pay for deregulation through bonding. The bonds used to pay the cost were securitized by the imposition of a fee on electric bills amounting to about $15 per month. The Competitive Transition Assessment (CTA), which has been appearing on electric bi...

The election of Joe Markley to the Connecticut’s General Assembly as a senator is, in the estimation of some Republican activists, on a par with dropping holy water into Hell. Mr. Markley has shed a few pounds since he first entered the Assembly a little more than a quarter of a century earlier during the Reagan ascendancy. He now looks like a svelte and convivial Mitch Miller, the hair on his head having over the years migrated to his chin. But looks, as they say, are deceptive. Mr. Markley can quote Shakespeare in polite company; he is more analytical than the usual latte lapping liberal, an adept stump speaker and dead serious about the pernicious effects increasing taxes have on a foundering economy. There is some indication that he’s familiar with Ludwig von Mises’ views on methodological individualism. Mr. Markley is a serious conservative, not at all a lightweight easily dismissed as a Tea Party insurrectionist motivated largely by undifferentiated anger, the usual critical ...

AT&T evidentialy is not content to remain prone under the jackboot of Connecticut’s Attorney General, Richard Blumenthal. In a month long legal battle with the company, Blumenthal ruled that AT&T no longer could provide TV service through their phone lines without registering as a cable company and promising to provide service through out the entire state, a provision that applies to cable franchises. Blumenthal, reasoning that price regulation leads to increased competition, lower rates and improved customer service, has in the past sought to force gas stations to provide unitary costs throughout the state. The State Department of Public Utility Control, reversing an earlier ruling that AT&T’s U-verse phone line TV service was not a cable business and hence did not require a franchise license, promptly put into effect Blumenthal’s ruling. The cable companies took AT&T to court, and the court sided with Big Cable, Blumenthal and a chastened DPUC. The DPUC’s about-face ...