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CC: We haven’t talked with you in a while. How are you?
Cynic: Likely not as good as you, from the looks of you.
CC: Meaning?
Cynic: You are young, I am old: “I wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”
CC: Ah, T.S. Elliot. And Connecticut? How goes the state?
Cynic: Politically, economically, and in other ways, it is living up to its motto, still the “state of steady (bad) habits.” Connecticut, under the last few governors and legislatures, has hardly scratched the surface of its gargantuan debt. I noticed that you noted in numerous blogs that the state has an unaddressed spending problem, made worse by political inattention. [Governor Ned] Lamont’s pretenses are becoming wearisome. How often do we see the word “spending” presented in newspaper accounts as a serious problem?
CC: Which of Lamont’s pretenses annoys you the most?
Cynic: His carefully crafted pretense to moderation. Moderation among state Democrats is a laughable pretense, hardly a curtsy in the direction of sound economics. I doubt any of the Democrat legislative gatekeepers has read or reread lately Henry Hazlet’s Economics in One Lesson. Everyone knows Connecticut is overrun with far left quasi-socialist legislators, including our asleep-at-the-wheel media which, by the way, has become alarmingly unified around equally astounding pretenses ever since the state’s independent press had been eaten alive by Big Media. When the Waterbury Republican American went down the gullet of the national and international Hearst chain, no one showed up at the funeral. That paper, along with the Journal Inquirer, now a part of the same chain, used to have bragging rights as fiercely independent newspaper outlets – no more.
CC: What is the evidence of Lamont’s immoderation?
Cynic: Much of it is cultural, and here there is a lack of creative give and take among Lamont, the state’s left leaning Democrat dominated General Assembly, and those upholding traditional cultural views now abandoned by reformist state Democrats. If one may extrapolate from positions supported by the governor and dominant Democrats in the General Assembly on abortion, one might suppose we are living in the pro-abortion wonderland of Planned Parenthood, a national and international abortion provider. Connecticut’s political models on cultural issues now eerily resemble those advanced by slithering California Governor Gavin Newsom. The Planned Parenthood cheering section in Connecticut is led, of course, by abortion radical U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal who, even as the state’s Attorney General for two decades, was supporting the organization and receiving from the abortion provider ample funding for his reelection campaigns. I don’t recall reading in any Connecticut newspaper an abundance of editorials holding the senator to account for his fulsome support of Big-Abortion. A few months ago, Lamont nodded his assent to a legislative measure that creates in Connecticut a sanctuary for those seeking surgical abortions in states that apply sanctions to abortion providers. And the governor also wants to stuff Planned Parenthood coffers with about $800 million tax dollars collected from Connecticut citizens, a good many of whom object to surgical abortions on religious or scientific grounds. Pro-abortion opponents tell us that their coffers have been reduced during the last few decades, but they make little attempt to account for the shortage, some of which is due to reduced support pledges. Also, demographers tell us, there are fewer births. In Connecticut and much of the nation, the birth rate has fallen below a rate of birth, 2.5 children, necessary to sustain a replacement population growth. Then too, what is the real difference between Planned Parenthood, considered solely as a “greedy” corporate enterprise, and the usual capitalist targets of Vermont socialist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders? Both are, or should be regarded in Sanders’ socialist view of things, as greedy, profit seeking businesses whose filthy rich CEOs unblemished socialists would rather see committed to work camps -- after their profits have been expropriated by a socially responsible, pro-abortion state such as China, now having difficulty filling its empty newly constructed cities. Sanders’ view of profits parallels former President Joe Biden’s view of energy products such as relatively clean natural gas – who needs this stuff? Who needs profits, who needs energy? Is it possible that Lamont really thinks windmills, in which Connecticut has heavily invested, can replace the state’s traditional sources of energy? Who among his business friends has not laughed at the notion? It seems to me there is some room for skepticism, if not cynicism, here.
CC: Ah! So you do make a distinction between, skepticism and cynicism.
Cynic: Sure, The skeptic is a man or woman who has serious doubts that political “solutions” presented to him will solve real problems, and the cynic knows the solutions will only worsen matters.
CC: In what camp do you place yourself?
Cynic: In matters I’ve mentioned here, I fall into the Cynic camp. I know positively, as you do, that the “solution” to high energy prices in the state offered by Marisa Gillett, the autocratic head of PURA – regulatory profit limits imposed upon Connecticut’s energy delivery system -- will not lead to lower energy prices. Former President Richard Nixon’s answer to high prices – wage and price controls – failed spectacularly to provide relief to anyone, including Nixon.
We’ve been there, done that. The thing has not worked, cannot work unless ambitious neo-progressive Sanders socialists are successful in repealing the free market system. That route leads to autocracy and away from the liberty of non-government controlled free exchanges. When in the postmodern period have Marxist-Leninist useful-idiotologies not led to gulags and empty shelves?
