Discussion among Connecticut seniors like me invariably drifts towards our children and grandchildren with a common theme – everyone must experience inconvenient travel for family reunions because our children have left the state.
Why?
Because the Democrats have destroyed our once job-creating economy with high taxes to finance the public sector with high wages, huge pensions and Cadillac health care coverage.
Holiday lights have dimmed and the festivities are over; in Connecticut, however, the season of giving is endless, particularly when it comes to the state’s union contracts.
But all too often, government unions get all the presents, and taxpayers find themselves left with the fiscal equivalent of a mountain of torn and discarded wrapping paper: escalating labor costs, directly impacting their wallets through higher taxes and reduced affordability—courtesy of the state’s opaque union negotiations. It's time for some common sense reform.
Last fiscal year, Governor Ned Lamont inked a deal with the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) for a 4.5% wage increase (including annual “step” increases, aka “annual increments,” that average 2%) for this fiscal year (FY2025).
The new deal was not originally part of the 2022 contract (SEBAC 2022), despite that it falls in the fourth year of SEBAC 2022. Rather, it was a result of a strategic maneuver known as a “wage reopener” — a term that stipulates that wages can be renegotiated in the final year of a labor contracts.
This most recent wage reopener was a deliberate tactic that either exposes the governor’s negotiators as outmatched or, worse, complicit in sacrificing fiscal responsibility for political support.
I was reminded recently of the old MasterCard commercials—the ones that conclude, “There are some things in this world money can’t buy. For everything else there’s MasterCard.” One of my favorites features a dad and his son going to a baseball game. The voiceover says, “2 tickets: $28. 2 hot dogs, 2 popcorns, 2 sodas: $18. One autographed baseball: $45. Real conversation with eleven-year-old son: priceless.”
Those commercials were fantastic. They spoke to something true. There really are some things that money can’t buy, and the commercials always suggested it’s those things that make life worthwhile. Money at its best serves the priceless thing, makes it possible, but money isn’t the thing itself.
It’s a valuable lesson, one which Jesus tries to get across to his disciples in Mark 10:17-27—a passage famous for the zinger, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:23). The story begins with Jesus meeting a rich man...
The U.S. is headed for "the most predictable economic crisis in history," as Eskine Bowles, Bill Clinton's former White House chief of staff, once put it.
Why? Because of the mountain of federal debt that we keep making bigger.
For the first time since the late 1940s, U.S. debt is roughly equal to U.S. GDP.
We already spend more on interest on the debt than we do on Medicaid and defense.
What Netanyahu seems not to grasp, however, is that there are many opportunities Israel can seize in order to right the ship in the wake of the myriad challenges that have cropped up in the nearly 300 days since Hamas’ devastating assault. Tragically, he is missing them all.
Democrats [have been] clinging to a fleeting strategy of getting their befuddled shell of a candidate/incumbent president across the Nov. 5 deadline. Now, they are left only with a new, unknown candidate and their worn-out narrative that our Democracy is under attack.
Meanwhile, it is the Democrats who took a wrecking ball to Democracy. After concealing President Joe Biden’s mental capacity... they gutted the primary process... by switching South Carolina’s primary to the head of the schedule, knowing it was the safe haven that saved Biden in 2020.
But if Joe Biden is not fit to run as a candidate for U.S. president as many people now believe, how is he fit to serve as president until Jan. 20, 2025?
The American public will expect details on who knew about Joe Biden’s declining capacity and when, and Connecticut residents will want to know how elected Democrats here feel about supporting candidates associated with an obvious coverup that threatens democracy.
Arab nations have begun to swing behind the idea of a multinational peacekeeping force for Gaza and the occupied West Bank, as they try to develop a viable postwar plan for the region.
May 6, 2024
The draft proposals are among multiple options being debated as Arab and western states, desperate to see an end to the conflict, struggle to lay out a path towards regional stability and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
On April 29, the Connecticut House passed a bill mandating that specific state agencies allocate 15% of their annual advertising budgets to locally owned media starting July 1, 2025. The measure passed largely along party lines, 92-53. The bill remains under consideration in the Senate, with no vote yet scheduled.
The Founders understood the critical need to keep the press free from government control.
The financial reliance of local media on government funding could result in a reluctance to publish content critical of the government.
National Public Radio (NPR) is currently embroiled in a scandal following an essay by Uri Berliner, a 25-year veteran at NPR, alleging that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.”
By Times of Israel Staff & Reuters, Apr 6,2024 - Posted on Apr. 6, 2024
Several dozen Democratic members of Congress, including former speaker Nancy Pelosi, have sent a letter to US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling for a halt on arms transfers to Israel following an IDF strike in Gaza that killed seven staffers of the World Central Kitchen, including a dual US citizen.
April 6, 2024
“In light of this incident, we strongly urge you to reconsider your recent decision to authorize the transfer of a new arms package to Israel, and to withhold this and any future offensive arms transfers until a full investigation into the airstrike is completed,” the House representatives wrote.
By Mark Landler, NY Times London Bur Chief - Apr. 4, 2024 - Post on Apr. 4, 2024
The British government is coming under escalating pressure to suspend arms sales to Israel after the strike on a convoy in Gaza that killed seven aid workers, including three Britons.
February 23, 2024
More than 600 lawyers and retired judges sent a letter to the government, arguing that the sales violated international law.