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Thinking the Unthinkable
After Rowland, the deluge?
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Business New Haven
3/22/1999
By: Laurence D. Cohen
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As one of Gov. John Rowland's most loyal lapdogs in defense of less government, more prisons, and the elimination of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women Who Love High Taxes, it's my duty to imagine the unimaginable: What will Connecticut be like, when he is gone?
In the short term, of course, the prospect seems unlikely; his political popularity is matched only by deputy sheriffs who can serve court papers and register dead voters in the same trip. There is a chance he could get plucked to be the GOP's vice presidential candidate, but he's probably too much of a sissy on social issues and Bill Clinton's tenure as director of interns.
John Rowland gone? Politically, he seems safer than a Soviet leader before Citibank bought the empire and Coke took over the vodka plants. Even the Hartford Courant and the New York Times endorsed him, which is sort of like the New England Journal of Medicine endorsing the Marlboro Man.
John Rowland is an unbeatable “compassionate conservative,” a social worker with an attitude, a right-wing nuclear sub without any missiles.
But at some point he will be gone, and it's fair to ask what kind of Connecticut he will leave behind. If current trends continue, some things seem clear.
The state's major cities, all of which will have been renamed “Rowlandtown,” will have elected CPAs as mayors, whose major function will be to schedule ribbon-cuttings and keep track of the 338,000 subsidies, tax breaks and grants given to failing stores, convention centers and a professional roller derby team that took the space formerly occupied by the Salt Lake City Patriots.
The annual state budget surplus will be $47 billion, fueled by a state income tax of one percent, paid entirely by three investment bankers in Darien whose wives refused to move to Florida or Texas (which have no income tax), or to New Hampshire (which has no taxes of any kind except on bottles of Wild Turkey sold at state-owned liquor stores to Connecticut smugglers).
State-subsidized pre-school swimming classes will be required for all Connecticut fetuses, in response to a report from the Governor's Commission on How To Spend the Surplus, indicating that Eastern European newborns have bulging biceps and mustaches (girls too), leaving Connecticut children at a competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace.
Hartford Public High School will still be on probation, or teetering on the precipice of probation, or scheduled to have its roof replaced, but five students each semester will be allowed to transfer to any other public school in Hartford, as long as the kids agree to write 100 times on the blackboard, “I love the Connecticut Federation of Teachers.”
State-subsidized health-insurance premiums in Connecticut will average $40,000 per person, in response to a state law requiring insurers to cover every disease ever mentioned in the Journal of the American Medical Association - including a courage transplant for AG Richard Blumenthal, who still refused to run for governor, because the “Rowland legacy” would be too hard to overcome.
All state-subsidized nursing homes were ordered to install champagne fountains in their lobbies (for the staff, not the patients) - a compassionate Rowland concession to the General Assembly, whose members all belong to District 1199 of the New England Health Care Employees Union, or whose spouses, brothers and cousins are members of 1199, or who appreciate that 1199 members stuff constituent mailboxes with campaign literature extolling the virtues of compassionate conservatism.
The state Capitol was relocated to Brewster, N.Y. so that a state-subsidized environmental group could tear down the existing structure and return the land to “open space” available only to squirrels.
And finally, in response to concerns from all three uncompassionate conservatives in the General Assembly that state government seemed to be subsidizing or regulating almost every human activity, Rowland sold the Motor Vehicle Department to a private photo lab; spun off the Shore Line East rail system to a limousine service that promised to drive both commuters to work each day; and donated the child-protection function to a private social service agency that didn't think drug-addicted “boyfriends” and irresponsible moms constituted a warm family environment.
Adieu, John Rowland. You will not soon be forgotten.
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