Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

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...

Forbes magazine asked last March “ Can Connecticut Be Saved ?” The bone-crushing statistics provided were telling: “Connecticut’s job-growth rate is a meager 1.1%, compared with the national average of 5.1%. According to the Connecticut Department of Labor, the state’s unemployment rate is 5.5%, compared with a national average of 4.9%. Connecticut ranks among the top 10 states for net out-migration, losing 140,571 taxpayers in that same 10-year time period. And this trend can be tracked over several decades. Between 1992 and 2014, Connecticut lost $12.36 billion in annual adjusted gross income (AGI).” Last July the  Mercatus Center  placed Connecticut number one among states having the worst fiscal conditions in the nation. So then, what can be done to pull Connecticut from its tailspin?

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...

President Barack Obama visited the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London last Wednesday, bearing an Al-Gore-like message to the assembled military troops. “ Obama Stresses Security Threat Of Climate Change ” read an editorial in a Hartford paper. Shaken editorial writers proclaimed, “… Mr. Obama has an urgent alarm to sound. He's made climate change a top priority for the remainder of his second term. He's had trouble, however, bringing the Republican-led Congress onboard, so he's resorted to a series of executive orders. ‘Going forward,’ he said Wednesday, ‘I've committed to doubling the pace at which we cut carbon pollution’ on many fronts — more efficient buildings and power plants, renewables, energy research.

Chief Executive Magazine , a publication read by national and international Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of major and minor firms, has just released its list of best and worst places to do business in the United States. Connecticut ranks four spots from last on the list. Three comments from CEOs were far from reassuring: “A difficult tax structure like the ones in New York or Connecticut makes incentive-giving easy, but penalizes existing businesses,” said one. “The climate for coming is better than the climate for staying.”

Ralph Nader once again is prowling the countryside saying things that are not so much wrong as passe. He does this because he himself is passe. Consumer advocacy, Mr. Nader’s specialty, reigns supreme everywhere in Connecticut, which only a short while ago sent to the U.S. Congress the nation’s first consumer protection senator, Dick Blumenthal, a little stiffer than Mr. Nader, but made from the same ideological cloth. Not having kept up with the times, Mr. Nader seems to be laboring under the illusion that both major political parties in the United States “continually reject even considering cracking down on corporate crimes, crony capitalism or corporate welfare.”

The Connecticut Business and Industry Association (CBIA), it must be admitted, knows a thing or two about Connecticut’s businesses and industries – perhaps even more than members of the state’s General Assembly, a majority of whom regularly pass bills and restrictions on companies in Connecticut, sometimes heedless of the real-world unintended consequences of such legislation. CBIA, one of the largest statewide business organizations in the country, boasts 10,000 member companies. In business for more than 175 years, CBIA represents the collective voice of Connecticut’s industries crying in a parched wilderness.

While President Barack Obama was doubling down on his discredited narrative concerning the attack by terrorists on the Benghazi consulate, in the course of which Mr. Obama’s personal minister – that is what an ambassador is; the personal minister of the president – was murdered, it was revealed that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had targeted Tea Party groups for what may turn out to be punitive audits.