Wow, just what we need in the stretch run to a new state budget: Senate Majority Leader Marty Looney going bonkers over a throw-away quote by Chris Cooper, the recently retired Rell spokesman who has come back, for free, a couple days over the last week to deal with poitical damage control for the governor. Yesterday, the Working Families folks staged a rather imaginative, for them, “Billionsiars for Budget Cuts,” a sarcastic attempt to lampoon the governor for cutting social spending and protecting the state’s wealthy from higher taxes.
Both GOP State Chairman Chris Healy and Cooper used the C-word, communism, to describe the event.“The Democats have been holding well-orchestrated events for the last six months to try and raise support for the billions of dollars in new taxes they have proposed. Now, they have apparently aligned themselves with the Connecticut Communist Party for their latest act of political theater,” Cooper said.
Looney just issued the following release:“This was one of the most reckless and irresponsible attempted smears I have seen in my 29 years in the General Assembly. It seems that the corrosive spirit of Senator Joseph McCarthy is alive and well and with the governor’s spokesman.
The attack could be dismissed as desperate and laughable if it weren’t so malevolent. To imply that the so-called millionaire’s tax somehow suggests communism rather than fundamental American fairness is reprehensible.
This is a clumsy and transparent ploy to divert attention away from the reality that the Democratic plan for a more progressive income tax enjoys broad public support.”
The Blogster thinks it’s still laughable, but Looney’s overreaction is worthy of our life and times. If only his caucus had the 24 solid votes needed to push through the Dems’ proposed higher taxes on Connecticut’s wealthiest, then the whole budget impasse could drift into memory.