New York City. A borrowed apartment near Grammercy Park. I don’t even know the wireless code, so I’m working offline. It’s not the name of the cat, which I consider insulting to the cat. We’ve seen two plays and one move since arriving Friday night. Going to a NYC movie theater these days is like visiting some very well-heeled but embattled stronghold. One is bombarded with anti-Bloomberg, pro-big-soda propaganda. You would think the very fabric of liberty hung thereupon.
Here is today’s column.
I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it. Here’s the documentation on toothlessness. Looking at the comments, you can see the political troubles Malloy faces. In the space of a few lines you can see the union people who think he hit them too hard (he didn”t) and the conservatives angry about taxes and death penalty repeal. Centrism isn’t want it used to be. Just ask Obama. When Malloy runs again, he’s going to make it clear that he’s tougher than any other Democrat alternative and less apocalyptic than any likely Republican nominee.
Ah. I jut got the password.. Poor cat.
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10 Responses to Malloy and the Big Gulp
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To understand Malloy’s low polling numbers you need to understand the great state divide.
Who won under Malloy:
Social Issues: transgender rights, marijuana users, alcohol sales, mandated abortion coverage on the insurance exchange, death penalty opponents, free contraception.
Did I miss anything moderate or conservative here? It’s the usual “sex and drugs are the opiates of the people” Democratic agenda. No suprises.
Military spending? Nothing to indicate the Malloy administration thinks CT should sell fewer weapons and stop the war profiteering. That only becomes an issue at election time when the GOP is in office and the Democrats use peace marches and the war dead as political props and tools to be used. I don’t see many caskets in Bushnell Park under a Malloy/Obama administration.
Economics? Ask Litchfield County what they won under the Malloy administration? Expanded entitlement programs and no layoff union contracts? Donovan ‘Pay for Play’ scndals? A Teachers Union that lobbies against Federal funding and supports higher taxes to make up their fantastical $1.5 billion shortfall in education equity? State Pensions which allow prison guards to retire at age 43 earning more than the media income? Special Pension legislation for Adamowski and other double and triple dippers allowing political appointees to rape, pillage and gouge with impunity? The New Britain Highway? The Mutant Mice?
I think you’ll find social and economic moderates outside of Hartford county are less than impressed. I haven’t seen a Litchfield County secession movement yet, not like one to match Upstate NY’s periodic pleas for “Fiscal Fairness for Upstate” or similar Western mass movements, but the grousing is there. Some aren’t happy with shipping their tax dollars of to Hartford (the State Capitol) and getting little in return and watching jobs either dry up or return offering less pay.
A preliminary look at fiscal data shows Indiana will close the 2012 Fiscal Year, which ended June 30, with reserves of more than $2 billion and an annual revenue of more than $500 million than annual expenses.
“Thanks to this amount there will be a major infusion of money into Indiana’s pension funds, which are already the strongest in the country..
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Public sector unions are a travesty, but the objective for folks of all stripes, wings, and orientations should be to avoid the kind of thing happening in Scranton, Detroit, Greece. Just because Atty. Malloy walks the picket line doesn’t mean his policies are good for workers. Indiana is hostile to unions, but the workers’s pensions are actually funded.
Colin, on what grounds would you call Gov. Malloy “a pretty good governor”? That he’s different than one governor you hated (Rell) and another that you despised (Rowland)?
He’s raised taxes and chased jobs away, ignored the will and purpose of the legislature, forced unionization on home health care providers and thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at bad, unsupportable projects. How does this track record make one a pretty good governor?
If you just plain like the guy, say so.
I don’t like or dislike the guy. I do note that CT voters have a tendency to blame the person who cleans up the mess, not the people who made it. Malloy inherited an unprecedented $3.5 billion deficit. He didn’t create it,. He wasn’t around. It was just there waiting for him. Yes, I would have liked to see more substantive state employee concessions. No, I don’t think the problem is fully solved yet. But it was going to a big ugly inconclusive mess no matter who took it over. I’d give him a c+/b- on it. I’d give an F to the two governors who made the mess.
I think the big projects are similarly a mixed bag. I think the busway will be a plus. (Bear in mind it was conceived by the Rowland administration and nursed along in the Rell administration. Even if you hate the busway, it’s sort of weird to blame Malloy. If he had pulled the plug we would have lost a lot of federal money and destroyed our credibility for seeking future funds.)
I think Jackson Labs will be a home run. I think some of other first five stuff was rubbish.
I have other misgivings, but I still come out here: he works incredibly hard, harder than any governor I’ve covered since Grasso. He’s truly conscientious: he takes the job seriously.
It wasn’t a matter of “not liking” Rell and Rowland. Rell was a no-show. Rowland treated the job as his country club and ATM machine.
I guess we disagree on the mess. Malloy isn’t cleaning up anything, he’s digging deeper. Ask the folks at UTC. Of course, you’re giving him a C+/B-, which is about five grades too high for my liking and about seven too low for most liberals, so I guess that’s fair.
Your defense of the busway as a project conceived under Rowland, like defenses of Obamacare in that it’s similar to Romney’s Mass. plan, are similarly unavailing. It’s like you’re trying to ignore opposition to the idea because one Republican bureaucrat came up with it first. (The Obamacare argument also ignores the difference between states and the federal government, but that’s a relevant anecdote and tangent, not your original point.)
Also, we wouldn’t have “lost” the federal funds, we would have simply “lost” the ability to spend $600 million and have the feds pick up $500 million of the tab. We’d still have $100 million, right? The busway is a waste, and will be a failure of the highest order if Hartford doesn’t slash its own taxes and start to redevelop itself. I hope you weren’t counting on any UTC employees riding the bus to Hartford, because the only ones left in Hartford will be working out of their new corporate campuses in Farmington or Charlotte by the time it is built.
Yes, the governor is trying hard, and yes, he is taking his job seriously, but you could say the same about the President, they’re both just spending our money like a couple of trust fund kids at private school, and the results aren’t (and won’t be) there.
Colin you and the wind have alot in common you never know which way it will blow. I really think that you and Rowland should do a radio show together, now that will be !
I’d love to hear John and Colin debate
Radio gold even better than great
Here’s my humble hunch
Gov would eat Colin’s lunch
When do Democrats taste Colin’s bitterness and hate
West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee one through three
Once ObamaCare kicks dental will all be free
Food police need to stop
Why is Bloomberg the soda cop
Leftists are better when they only hug a tree
I don’t think Malloy is a bad Governor. OTOH He’s not offering anything for moderates to get excited about.
Rell was underappreaciated as a caretaker Governor. Granted she threw in the towel when it was obvious there was no making headway with Donovan and Williams over the budget during the recession. They were hellbent on spending the Rainy Day fund and conducting business as usual–two problems Dan Malloy will need to contend with if Romney is elected.
So far two legislative session: the SEBAC the union negotiations in term 1 and the education reform in term 2 were largely status quo posturings and overtly controlled by public sector unions at the expense of taxpayers.
Adopting school vouchers and eliminating pension spiking and establishing pension limits would have gone a long way to raising Dan’s grade to B.
Eliminating Haz Duty Pensions and fast tracking a “one policy to heal them all approach to SustiNet, Medicare, and State Worker Insurance and I’d give him an ‘A’ for two years.
Like Obama, Dan Malloy is the Great Meh. Suggesting that anyone who doesn’t back his implementation of Obamacare as un-Patriotic is too funny for words. It’s a pretty lame attempt at some form of universal care. Mass is 6 years ahead and it shows: they are finally looking at the delivery system (the Ivy and near Uvy teaching hospitals and the ‘branded’ guys and gals in the green gowns) and finally looking at the real cause of the price spiral. Dan’s group Exchange Group is still mired in the demonize insurance companies age of adolescence.
Looking at the source you gave for toothlessness but switching to other measures the one that struck me the most was this one.
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/hea_tee_bir_rat_per_100-birth-rate-per-1-000