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Saturday, February 25. 2017A state that turned from ruggedly independent to Blue despairHow the Blue Model fails. For a century, this conservative Protestant state, the "Land of Steady Habits," was a state of tough Yankee self-reliance and no faith in or expectations from government of any sort. It had no income tax until recent years (damn that Republican jerk Gov. Lowell Weicker who put in the tax and fled the state to avoid his taxes as soon as he was out of office). Weicker swore that the state income tax would solve all the problems. It was the opposite, with deeper and deeper debt and higher and higher taxes ever since. Did I mention that, since Weicker, the state has been basically bankrupt? It has been a sad path for the beloved Yankee state of my ancestors: Disgraced Gov. refuses to follow federal law on immigration, half his state wants to leave – but can’t sell their houses. Under the Blue Model, jobs have fled, manufacturing has fled, the cities are in the ICU and run by various union, ethnic, or other mobsters and predators, and the government unions control the levers of government. Catastrophe. Few remember that in the 1960s Hartford was the most desirable small city in America according to Time magazine. Now it is a dangerous (at night) shithole of degeneracy, dependency, and hugely-expensive and failing government schools. Pubiic schools in Hartford now cost taxpayers more than fancy private schools. All the Liberals and Lefties now want to move to red states to survive which I find grimly amusing. Of course, they bring their blue votes with them. Without the wealth of Fairfield County which is basically a prosperous suburb of NYC, the state wouid now be one of the saddest in the nation. A thin thread of hedge fund taxes barely holds the state together because government has killed the other industries and does its best to kill small businesses. The governor is a pathetic putz, a union hack. A sad story about how the Blue Government illness can kill the goose that laid golden eggs in a lovely New England state. We stay here despite all the mess. I think it's the same reason people stay in California despite its mess. If you can figure out how to make a living and to minimize your taxes, it's still a fine home.
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Connecticut is going the way of Massachusetts. Escape to New Hampshire if you can. It is useful to understand that while half of the state's population may dislike what the governor is doing the other half likes it. And the half paying the bill are stuck with their old political biases handed down from father to son. I would bet you dollars for Dunkin doughnuts that many of those wishing to sell and leave the state will continue to vote Democrat in their new state.
Meanwhile the Democrats continue to divide and conquer. They have become the party of angry/minority/rentseekers/special interest. All of these parties have agreed to aim their vitriol at the Republicans in exchange for free stuff and legislation that favors their special interest. YOU are the target. Connecticut has a middle class and and upper class who have homes, good jobs, savings, income and YOU are their target. They won't (well, some will) come to your house and rob you at the point of a gun. What they will do is legislate against you and take your money, take your future and all the while denigrate and despise you. This is the Democrat plan. In the end it will work out as well as it did for Hugo Chavez in Venezuela but no worries the left and their horde of rentseekers will move on to greener pastures. That is the master plan to harvest your wealth and assets until it's all gone. The bad news for them is there is no plan B for when it is all gone. I'm guessing that they will settle down and take minimum wage jobs and become socialized... Bwahahahahaha!!! How much longer can it go on?
10 years? Longer? It amazes me that Blue voters are good with this. I can only speculate that they feel they are getting benevolent government producing great social good for their tax monies and that it is all worth it. you should see how They are californicating Nevada. word is, public drunkenness is to be outlawed. and when Capt. Renault discovers gambling is allowed ... .
@GWTW: "rentseekers"? renters??? If they escape to a red state , they should be required to swear and oath and sign a binding contract that they will not bring their idiotic ideas with them . The penalty for failure should be death . Enough MassHoles .
We moved here with Thomas Hooker and have never left. But, our current house on the hill after 140 years, I don't know. I don't want to leave, but we will likely have to.
(I voted Democrat only once in my life, it was due to Weicker.) My family were Yankees since we landed in Massachusetts Bay Colony circa 1635. My wife and I sold our home in the Nutmeg State 15 years ago and decamped to Florida once the taxes became too onerous to bear. I miss the Northeast, but we would never move back for love nor money. Tragic, but there you are.
No, don't come to NH, any of you exiles. You wouldn't like it here.
I remember when they voted in the tax. Slimy Lowell saying, "it's only .5%, you'll barely notice," but once the rubes passed it, once the pols have it on the books,..........so many good causes to finance, so much good work to do.
California is Illinois with better weather. The pension overhang is enormous. The state is dependent on high incomes in Silicon Valley paying the high income taxes. If the tech industry hits a bad patch, California will be bankrupt.
The Greenies have killed off the agriculture that I showed my English friends ten years ago. I drove them through the central valley, what John Muir called "Bee Pastures" in 1866. It is now hundreds of miles of dead fields. Nor Texas. People in Texas have small hands and smell like cabbage.
But at least the delta smelts are unencumbered. All hail the delta smelt. And maybe snail darters (but those are soooooo 1970s/80s).
I moved from CT to TX decades ago. I was a party line Demo voter in CT. I voted third party in TX and gradually moved to the Republican side.
Foreign policy was my main reason for shifting, though little by little I saw that Demo positions on domestic policy didn't make any more sense to me. Though as my mother was from the SW, I adapted to TX faster than most transplants. For example, I loved okra before I moved to TX. I share many of these sentiments from the Barrister here.
I retired and left my beloved New London, "too Blue" Connecticut, for coastal South Carolina in 2014. Heh. But of course, rightists are incapable of statism.
Texas always has suited me, but if you didn't grow up here, the weather might be a little tough to take.
Born in CT(Navy side), moved at 5 to FL. Have relatives there who complained about all the problems yet voted for those same pols. They moved to sC and will probably take their blue state ideas with them. A shame, they are very nice people, they don't see the connection. What's funny they couldn't sell their house for the longest time. This article is so true.
Meet the Press had the governor of Colorado on today. Hickenlooper. I wonder if he is related to the Republican Senator from Iowa? Leftist billionaires moved to hot spots like Aspen and spent millions to turn Colorado blue. Marijuana seems to be the Democrats' big issue these days. Half the discussion was about it.
My second son moved from NH to Texas (via college in KY) as an adult and states he will never move back. He is very fair, but has adjusted to the sun and the heat reasonably well.
This phenomenon is almost ubiquitous along the coasts. I left Virginia in 2009 after I retired, and have never looked back. I miss my friends, but that's all. Since I moved, Virginia has gone full blue with a worthless Clinton lackey governor and of course it now has Tim Kaine as its second democrat senator. Sad, because this is driven almost completely by the Northern VA liberals. As a side note, one other HUGE advantage to moving out of these blue hellholes is that there's >not< a cop behind every tree in the still-free parts of the US. Virginia must derive some huge percentage of its operating budget from traffic fines. Maryland, long since having gone down the blue rat hole, certainly has cops everywhere, even more so than Virginia—and that's saying somethin'. The weather up here on the Northern Plains seems to keep many of these worthless progressive clowns out. I love it. Flyover Country is now home.
Many years ago (1978 I think) I was driving from Southern Ohio to Northern Virginia to visit a friend. Left after work and got into Virginia about 2:00 AM. Driving on a large major highway there were seven cars on the road, myself and six others. I had been warned about Virginia's enthusiastic enforcement of speed limits so I was driving one mile above the speed limit, 56mph, as was everyone else. All at once, as if on cue three of these cars turned on their red and blue lights and pulled over the other three. If there had been a forth police car I would probably have been pulled over too. So I slowed to 55 mph and kept driving.
I grew up in a CT house with minimal heating and no AC, so I was accustomed to sleeping in a bedroom in the 50s in the winter and going through the two weeks of 90 degree temperatures in the summer without AC. I also spent a lot of time outside, so I felt uncomfortable in winter if a room's temperature was above 65.
As a result, I was able to adjust to TX summers without AC, as I had done so for the two weeks of 90 degrees per year in CT. I will never be comfortable in 100+ degrees weather, but as long as the daily high is 95 or below, I am quite comfortable without AC. My downstairs is in the low 80s until the daily high gets above 95 or 100. Granted, I much prefer January weather to August. There is the old joke about the Devil buying TX, and having to decide whether to live in Hell and rent out TX, or vice versa. The Devil decided to rent out TX and live in hell, as TX was hotter. During the recent drought, he may have been right. Illinois, where I live: same/same. Grew up here, raised 3 kids, two of them still in high school, and I've advised all of them, unfortunately, to start their adult lives anywhere but here. The future is brighter elsewhere, why bother? It's a sucker's bet.
It is such a tragedy when corrupt politicians and their various connected friends purposefully destroy a fine place to live and raise a family (excluding weather, of course, Lol). And it's always, *always*, the Democrat controlled one-party states that run into these problems. Unexpectedly. Rent Seeking
Essentially lobbying the government to give you income, clients or competitive advantage via regulation or public policy. If you read blogs from Russia or much of Eastern Europe they read much the same. The advice is, if you're young and can go, get out and start your life somewhere with a future.
Consider the Democrats have turned the Northeast into something resembling post communist Eastern Europe and Russia. Think about that! This keeps repeating.
Blue staters screw up their own state. Flee to some other state because things are better there. Then screw up that state. NY has infected the rest of the Northeast CA has infected the West and Nevada and Colorado WI is about the only state I've seen to start to turn it around. Maybe MI can turn it around now that Detroit is empty. States should pass a constitutional amendment as follows:
1. Persons establishing a new state residency (i.e., not a change of residency within state) shall be prohibited from voting in state elections for a minimum of five years (ten years, if the prior residency is California). 2. The waiting period shall start on the date of issuance of the new resident's state-issued voter ID. 3. New residents shall be registered to vote at the time of issuance of voter ID, in precincts reserved exclusively for national races (i.e. for president and vice president). It's not going to change any time soon. All of my family but me still live in CT, and they are blue-to-the-bitter-enders. That's the basic blue tactic - screw things up so badly that your political opponents all move away, and then cash in on political monopoly.
Mike, Aspen is actually a company town owned by a mega-billionaire from the Chicago area.
The politics are much the same- the owner is one of the people who propelled the obscure lecturer from U of C to heights far beyond his stature. In other words, Aspen is a suburb of both Chicago and San Jose. I enjoy the mess in CT. See, I'm a hobby metalworker, and I get to buy nice old used metalworking tools for pennies on the dollar. I say old, because no one has done any investment in new ones in years
Don't forget to tell them about the venomous insects and reptiles, the scorching hot and humid summers and the armadillos have leprosy. Also, everybody has a gun so it is a bad idea to give people the finger while driving.
I'd like to make one additional point. Weicker was the 2nd worst governor Conn. ever had. The worst was his predecessor, Bill O'Neill. I put Jodi Rell, who had no clue what a veto pen looked like at #3.
O'Neill, and his other democrat cronies put spending on the out of control path. Then when the time came to make a budget to pay for it, he pulls the "I have decided not to run for reelection." so his crap he created goes to the next person. I'll give Weicker credit for one thing. During his campaign, he was asked about implementing an income tax. He said that it would be like "pouring gas on a fire". He was certainly correct about that. What's not to like? Constitutional carry, the White Mountains, the lakes, no income tax? As soon as I can shed myself of Connecticut I will be heading north to New Hampshire. Solid red voter, me and mine. We won't be looking to change your state, but to help conserve it's values.
Can we move there? I wouldn't vote for a Democrat if you held a gun to my head.
It's not that rightists are not capable of being statists, its that statism is always the preferable solution for leftists.
Lowell's income tax was in fact a PERSONAL TAX CUT: Weicker's wealth was as an heir to the Squibb fortune, and most of his income (except as a selectman, congressman and senator) was unearned. CT did not tax earned income, but did tax interest and dividends at 10%. By going to a (then) 4% state income tax on all income, whether earned, interest or dividends, his personal taxes were cut by 60%. A few people tried to point this out during the discussions over the income tax, but were drowned out and not published. The final vote to put the income tax in was Republican State Senator Bill Nickerson, from Greenwich, a financial guy whose clients and back country Greenwich friends stood, like Weicker, to get a tax CUT from the income tax bill.
Yes Weicker was always a Republican while in office. But you have to remember he was a North Eastern Republican which means he was only slightly less deranged and noxious than a North Eastern Democrat. But that description made him, arguably, more dangerous.
As a resident of SC I have no doubt they are voting the blue state line. I cannot tell you how many people I know retired from NY, NJ, OH, IL...........who are living here because of the lower cost of living ie taxes but continue to vote for Democrats and to make fun of SC's level of services. Go back to where you came from if it's so great.
Actually Weicker formed his own party for the guv run. From wikipedia: A Connecticut Party was a political party formed by former Republican Senator and gubernatorial candidate Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. in 1990.[1] Weicker subsequently won the election and served a single term as Governor of Connecticut. The party was intentionally named in a manner so as to fall first, alphabetically, on the ballot.[2]"
Its tragic what the Dems/unions have done to this state. Its Sowell's Vision of the Anointed all the way down. Rent-seeking is a term of art from economic theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking.
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