Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Like most turkeys, the new Democratic-Rell budget will be gobbling a lot of money. But not to worry, said Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney , from the Democratic Republic of New Haven, the new “millionaire’s tax” has become “the centerpiece of Democratic tax policy for this whole decade.” The state’s precarious budget is put together with revenue engines that melt like popsicles after a few years, after which the vanishing one-time revenues will bring us all back to square one: The present Democratic-Rell budget borrows $1.3 billion, drains the rainy day fund of $1.5 billion, and looks forward nervously to the receipt of $1.5 billion in narrowly targeted federal stimulus money – no way to run a $17 billion dollar a year business. And, oh yes, the state is looking square in the eye of a $9 billion future deficit. Happy days are here again. Just as on the style runway red is sometimes the new black, Loony’s new progressive income tax is the new income tax; and all of us know what happ...

Most media outlets in Connecticut have called for a speedy resolution of budget negotiations now being held in camera by the governor, a few Republicans and leaders of the Democratic controlled legislature. The problem here is that all these so called budget “negotiations” are being held behind closed doors, out of view of the public. So, one must accept at their word conflicting reports of the discussions. Naturally, there are two widely divergent accounts of the secret meetings. Here’s what we know: Rell and the Republicans are heavily outnumbered. The Democrats could, if they wished, pass their own preferred budget over Rell’s objections. Indeed, she has challenged them to do just this. It is possible they declined for politically expedient reasons: It was not in their long term interest to present a bill during the regular session in public square. In the past, Republican governors and the thimble full of Republicans in the legislature have shown themselves to be amenable to press...

The National Conference of State Legislatures’ report on how well drafters of state budgets read the recession’s economic tea-leaves is now in. The results are dissappointing, according to a report in the New York Times. “Thirty-one states said estimates about personal income taxes had been overly optimistic, and 25 said that all three major tax categories — sales taxes, personal income taxes and corporate taxes — were not keeping up with projections. “Three states, for example — Alabama, Colorado and North Dakota — said personal income taxes were coming in higher than expected. But they said they had seen declines in other tax categories, like corporate taxes (down 33 percent in North Dakota), severance taxes from oil and gas (down 51.8 percent in Colorado) or sales tax (down 8.5 percent in Alabama.) “Hardest hit on the income tax collection front was New York, where revenues were off 48.9 percent compared with the last fiscal year. Corporate income taxes plummeted most in Oregon, do...

Good times and bad times, as we all know, are determined by state budget crunchers. A good time is one in which the state – here defined as state legislators, mostly Democrats – are wallowing in surpluses. A surplus is an excess of treasury money, here defined as the amount of money that legislators have overtaxed the citizenry. In good times, these overcharges are not returned to taxpayers. They are sometimes used to pay off debts incurred by legislators, mostly Democrats, who have not kept up payments on their obligations. To pick but one example, state teacher pensions are languishing because the state has used surpluses for purposes other than to meet its obligations to teachers. The state has not used its surpluses to pay off bonding debt because legislators know that they can fool most of the people all of the time into thinking that state bonding does not create debt. In fact, bonding creates debt – but, as we have seen, no obligation to pay it off – and overspending also create...

U.S Representative Mark Foley, as everyone must know by now, is gay. His sexual orientation makes any discussion of his fall from grace treacherous. If you are pro-gay, very likely you will argue that Foley’s disgrace was not related to his gaiety. The seduction of young female pages would have been equally repulsive. Foley was charged, as teachers are, with authority over young people, and he betrayed that trust. If you are anti-gay, you will take a quiet pleasure in his undoing and may hint that his sexual orientation, as well as his alcoholism, is primarily responsible for his precipitous fall. If you are an amateur psychologist – and who isn’t? – you might adopt the view that his frequent denials of his homosexuality forced him to wear a social mask that that could only lead to disaster. Had Foley been out of the closet, he might have been a little more circumspect and less self destructive. In fact, the amateur psychologist might reason, Foley’s e-mails, were a tearing away of the...

There is a scene in Jurassic Park in which the driver in a vehicle looks in his rear view mirror and sees for the first time a Tyrannosaurs Rex gaining on him; a little white message on the mirror informs us that “objects may be bigger than they appear.” Alfred Hitchcock would have loved that touch. Mayors John DeStefano and Dannel Malloy, both in hot pursuit of Democrat primary votes, have not glanced in their rear view mirrors lately. The one thing that Democrats despise -- even more than President George Bush -- is puffed up moralists; in this respect, one thinks of Sen. Joe McCarthy , beset with personal problems and an aggressive moralist, charging that one of Joseph Welch’s attorneys had ties to a communist organization. Welch, a Boston lawyer the Army had hired to represent it in the Army/McCarthy hearings promptly denounced McCarthy with the scorching words, "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." And when McCarth...