16 June—Forget about Father’s Day. Talk about wage inflation. And don’t blame it on poor old Joe Biden.

It’s absolutely unbelievable that Tesla shareholders voted to give Elon Musk a $45 billion pay package (or whatever the latest astronomical emolument amounts to), whatever his and/or their rationale may have been. Nothing against brilliant, flaky Elon, to be sure, but his brilliant and flaky leadership just isn’t worth it. Nobody’s brilliant (even if not flaky) leadership anywhere at all is worth anything even distantly approaching that. Forty-five billion is, to put it very mildly, excessive, irresponsible, and just plain ludicrous. It does nothing for Elon Musk in terms of lifestyle, security, or comfort; but it certainly bloats his already morbidly obese ego.

(Even a mere ten figures worth of fiscal fungibility surely would help Elon’s pals Donald Trump and Alex Jones pay their well-deserved if excessive court-ordered debts. And Elon wouldn’t even feel the pinch. But that’s another story.)

Just for the sake of comparison and argument, $45 billion is a couple billion more than next fiscal year’s budgets of Connecticut, Maine, and New Hampshire combined. Without diligently researching how Maine and New Hampshire rate on fiscal prudence and responsibility, it’s unlikely they—or any state except California—can be less prudent and fiscally responsible than Connecticut.

In all events, it’s totally safe and reasonable to assert with complete confidence that Connecticut’s $26 billion budget for fiscal 2025 is excessive, irresponsible, and just plain ludicrous—as usual. Connecticut budgets have been that way for at least the past decade. And most of the irresponsibly wasted scratch serves no worthwhile purpose—unless you consider getting irresponsible, self-serving politicians reelected worthwhile . . .