It’s 7:30 on Friday night. The Capitol is still and the Blogster is a posting away from taking a few days off to get over the laughter, lies and hypocrisy of the 2009 regular session.
But what were those things scattered all over the fourth floor of the historic Capitol this week? No, not the lobbyists who run the General Assembly, but the things in the brown boxes? Let’s open one and see. Oh, it’s a mailer. One of those six-sided things you occasionally get from your local state senator. It’s mostly blue and white, with black type. This one’s from L. Scott Frantz, R-Greenwich, an ambitious first-termer who took over this year from a Senate icon, Bill Nickerson.
All the Blogster can say is, lucky for the Republicans there was no budget deal, because this taxpayer-paid propaganda is chockful of slams at the Democrat’s budget proposal of two months ago that would depend on increasing taxes.
The mailer touts the “Republican No Tax Increase Budget” (yeah there maybe should have been a hyphen between ‘tax’ and ‘increase,’ but punctuation is a dying craft) focuses more on “spending reductions,” which can be called budget slashing, the way “tax increases” can be called revenue enhancements.
Anyway, the flyer already seems outdated because this GOP agitprop is still talking about an early retirement incentive that was approved in the last deficit-mitigation session of the General Assembly. Anyway, what bugs me the most the vestigial franking privilege of the incumbents is not what the stuff says. I hate the way the boxes in recent years have taken up floor space in this beautiful old building. The piles of brown boxes, from Democrats and Republicans cheapens the place even more than some of the weak debates that consumed hours and hours of the regular session of 2009. It’s time for someone to call them on it. Where’s the Capitol Preservation Committee when you need it?