In a Feb. 12 address to the Waterbury Regional Chamber, Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont conceded the state’s huge pension and other, related debt is a larger problem than he anticipated. Really?
Countless people have used “unsustainable” and “unaffordable” to describe the state’s pension and health-care obligations under agreements with the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC). What did Lamont think those adjectives meant?
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.
Beware politicians trying to limit transparency in government, especially when they want to maintain their own access to information but deny it to the public.
One such effort is underway in Hartford, where Proposed Bill 5507 would make voter registration data available only to “candidates, candidate committees, and political committees.”
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.
School busing, one of the most hated tools of social engineering, may be making a comeback in Connecticut, pursuant to legislation introduced by Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven. Beginning in 2021 under Senate Bill 454 (“Looney’s Bill”), many children may be riding buses for long distances, killing a cherished American institution – the neighborhood school.
February 6, 2019
Looney’s Bill would create a commission to merge school districts of towns with populations of less than 40,000 into new or existing regional districts. Only 24 of the state’s 169 towns have populations above this benchmark. The bill provides an exception for regional districts that operate “in a manner similar to the (54) probate (court) districts.” Either way, Looney’s Bill would trigger massive consolidation, all under the guise of “creating a more efficient educational system,” the stated purpose of the bill.
February 10, 2019
Looney’s Bill is but one page long. It is barely a bill. It hasn’t been through any committees, public hearings or debate in the legislature, so why even pay attention to it?
Because of its authorship. Looney is a veteran Senate leader. Veteran legislative leaders do not introduce bills unlikely to pass. Moreover, Democrats hold supermajorities of 60 percent plus in both chambers of the legislature. So, some version of forced school consolidation is virtually certain to pass.
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has suggested delaying or scrapping the annual State of the Union address by the president of the United States to a joint session of Congress and that, instead of delivering the address in person, President Trump send a written report. Pelosi alleges security concerns and hasn’t filed a concurrent resolution to set Jan. 29 as the day for his speech.
Let’s call this The Pelosi Shutdown, or The Pelosi Snub, or The Pelosi Snub-down.
No matter how ludicrous Pelosi’s pretext… er, reason, Trump should agree immediately, and then, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) should step in with an invitation for Trump to deliver an address in the Senate chamber.
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.
Outgoing Gov. Dannel P. Malloy has been busy in his waning days. As ever, he has been polishing his record and boasting of his accomplishments — on an epic scale. His “Malloy-Wyman Record” is a massive 283-page document, providing a distorted and inaccurate account, certainly concerning the enormous expenditures devoted to the care and feeding of the state workforce.
A no-confidence vote was called this week in the British Parliament; Prime Minister Theresa May
The backstop is a solution in search of a problem. It purports to preserve the open border between tiny Northern Ireland, the only non-contiguous part of the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland, its land neighbor on the Emerald Isle.
In truth, the open border can preserve itself, because trade and immigration flows across it are miniscule. The trade amounts to a rounding error in Britain’s overall volume of trade, and so does immigration in relation to overall migration into Britain.
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.
Union bosses claim that members are remaining steadfastly loyal in the face of “anti-union attacks” and recent adverse Supreme Court decisions. Actually, much of that solidarity derives from devious schemes and disinformation campaigns that the bosses are employing to lock workers into membership and dues paying.
In Connecticut, AFSCME, Council 4 is sending members letters denying their requests to resign because they “missed the window.” Council 4 points to membership cards explaining in fine print that membership is irrevocable from year to year unless a member submits a written resignation request within a 30-day “window” each year. The window is not uniform. It is different for each member, depending upon when he or she joined the union. Naturally, it is easy to miss the window.
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.
Here’s a “redprint” for GOP victory in Connecticut in 2020.
1. Don’t fight the last war. The 2018 election was contested in the rosy context of an unexpected burst of $2 billion of non-recurring tax revenue. By 2020, the state will be in full blown fiscal crisis. As hockey great Wayne Gretzky says, “Skate to where the puck will be, not where it is.”
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.
Last week’s blue wave rolled over already-blue Connecticut, subjugating its citizens under the absolute one-party rule of Democrats who retained the governorship and grew their majorities to super-majorities in both houses of the legislature.
It wasn’t just reaction to Donald Trump. Connecticut’s mainstream media whitewashed the abysmal record of unpopular outgoing Gov. Dannel Malloy, who, along with his fellow Democrats and allied union bosses, wielded full control over two terms with only slimmer margins.
Just as Tom Sawyer cleverly delegated the whitewashing of Aunt Polly’s fence to his friends, Connecticut Democrats would seem to have lured their media friends into doing their bidding in order to reduce the drag of Malloy’s unpopularity on their candidates.
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.
One Republican who survived the recent electoral wipeout of the state GOP was Rob Sampson, the chairman of the conservative caucus in the General Assembly, not exactly someone you’d have expected to weather a perfect blue storm.
Sampson won big. He won by about 5,650 votes, or 13 percent of votes cast, and he moved up from House District 80 (Southington, Wolcott), a seat he has held since 2012, to Senate District 16, adding Prospect and parts of Cheshire and Waterbury to his constituency.
In contrast, the GOP lost every statewide contest, all six federal contests and 115, or 61 percent, of 187 legislative contests, including a House seat held for more than a century and a Senate seat held since 1932.
Red Jahncke is a nationally recognized columnist, who writes about politics and policy. His columns appear in numerous national publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, USA Today, The Hill, Issues & Insights and National Review as well as many Connecticut newspapers.
