NO NON-DELIVERY NOTICES YESTERDAY!

11 February—Readers with good memories will recall that El Liberalissimo wasn’t thrilled when I alluded to “Connecticut’s grossly overcompensated unionized heroes” back in 18 November’s “If rape inevitable” Pop-Ed, as he paronomastically called the disquisition, when he expatiated a couple of days later on what he misinterpreted as my attack on teachers’ pay.

It was in actual fact an attack on Connecticut state employees’ overly generous pay and benefits. El nevertheless reminded me that most teachers’ contracts are negotiated with the regions they work for. While that’s certainly preferable to having the state labor morons (most of whom are beholden to labor unions and therefore have obvious conflicts of interests) do it, it still stinks.

Here’s why. El gave thumbs-up to Connecticut’s law that bans all public-employee unions from going on strike while the state mandates binding arbitration in return. I’ve been opposed to it since its passage in the mid-seventies. First, I’d rather give all workers the right to strike—and be replaced if possible and when necessary by what we all call scabs or blacklegs. El disagrees, of course. Second, binding arbitration is a corrupt practice whenever and wherever it’s mandated, with the arbitrators tending to favor the parties that hire them most often. Capitalism in action.

Then El reminded me that “CT has been able to build one of the best school systems in the country because we have been able to attract the best teachers. . . . The level of education in CT has been a constant selling point to companies looking to relocate or expand offices. All of that accrues to the financial health of CT and its 169 towns.”

Because he hasn’t specified his criteria, I won’t—I can’t—question El’s quality assessment. It’s certainly nice to believe that whatever we have and do is the best; and with flexible criteria anything can be best. But Connecticut’s level of education, however impressive it may or may not be, certainly hasn’t been able to compensate for the manifold other factors that famously discourage companies from moving in and more famously encourage companies to move out of the state.

An assessment of the financial health of Connecticut, as we just saw in the latest BBB (biennial budget bullshit), is nothing but the spin an—any—incumbent administration and legislature put on budgets for their own nefarious purposes. Discounting the spin, then, Connecticut’s financial prognosis isn’t too promising at all.

The financial health of Connecticut’s 169 towns would be much, much, much better were it not for counterproductive, positively stupid and wasteful state mandates for education and everything else, like binding arbitration for public-sector employees including teachers and the absolutely ludicrous Minimum Budget Requirement (MBR) that prohibits towns from spending less for education than they had done in the previous year unless they qualify for specific exceptions.

That MBR invitation to waste dates back to the mid-seventies, a little before binding arbitration. And it goes far beyond teachers’ pay. A humongous part of Connecticut’s problems stems from the patently unhealthy relationship the three Democrat-controlled branches of state government have with public-sector labor unions.

As long as that symbiotic incest is allowed to influence—make that define and determine—how the state is run—primarily for the benefit of the omnipotent unions—Connecticut will be in fiscal distress; and that will continue to metastasize beyond money, through all aspects of state government and life.

I’ve barely touched on teachers. So there will be a time for such a Pop-Ed tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow . . .