Malloy Tax Adjustments To Hit Wealthy Harder (CT Gov and his budget)

After hearing complaints from taxpayers during 17 town hall meetings, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is expected to announce changes in his tax package as early as Thursday that would increase taxes on the wealthy and help the middle class.

Malloy is expected to drop his plans for eliminating the maximum $500 property tax credit that chiefly benefits middle-class homeowners, Capitol sources said. Instead, the level probably will be lowered to $300.

To help pay for it, Malloy would propose changing the income levels at which tax hikes take effect for the highest earners. Higher tax rates would kick in at lower income levels for those wealthiest residents.

Republicans say that increased taxes like those on income and estates can reach a tipping point and cause wealthy residents to flee the state.

But Democrats and various advocates disputed that notion Wednesday, saying that Connecticut's standard of living is so good that the wealthiest residents would not bolt to other states. The Better Choices Coalition, which supports higher taxes, cited several studies Wednesday that indicated wealthy residents would not head to other states.

"Tax them, and they will not leave," Democrat Leo Canty, a longtime union leader and coalition supporter, said Wednesday. "There is no data that says they will leave.''

Canty disputed the notion that the rich, "like in 'The Grapes of Wrath,' would pack up the Mercedes and the Lamborghinis and load the Perrier up on the roof'" and flee to a lower-tax state.

CT, however, has been used to electing GOP Governors over the past 2 decades (and Tom Foley just as likely lost due to Dem chicanery as Brady did in IL). MD isn’t used to electing Republicans statewide (after all, as for the Governorship, the last three times they won were in 1954, 1966 and 2002, with the prior two being outright liberal Republicans - Ted McKeldin and Agnew). Ehrlich’s win, it seems, in ‘02, alas, was a fluke, predicated on the visceral unpopularity of Parris Glendening (who stole the ‘94 race) and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend got the receiving end of it.

Even just looking at the other two offices for MD (excluding Lt Governor, which goes with the Gov, and Sec of State, appointed by the Gov) whom face the voters: Attorney General and Comptroller, the Republicans last won the AG office in 1919 with Alexander Armstrong (and that, only because the left split the vote allowing a narrow plurality win for our side, and he promptly lost 4 years later to the incumbent Dem Governor, Albert Ritchie, also his predecessor as AG). Even when Ted McKeldin appointed a Republican in 1952 when the Dem AG moved up to a judgeship, he lost in ‘54 even as McKeldin won a second term. Prior to that, only in 1895 was another Republican elected (and before that, only one other served in 1865 when the office was reestablished, and I don’t think he was formally elected statewide). And, yup, aside from the ‘94 performance, the closest race for AG was in that aforementioned 1954 race by the appointed incumbent, and he still lost 53-47%.

Comptroller is even worse, with our having last won the office in 1897 with future U.S. Senator Phillips Lee Goldsborough. Not since 1946 has a GOP candidate gotten near 45% of the vote and only once since have they broken 40%, when current occupant Peter Franchot beat Anne McCarthy (a niece of legendary IL Chicagoland Republican Ed Derwinski) by a 59-41% margin after knocking out the incumbent (ex-Gov) William Donald Schaefer in a brutal 3-way primary.

Connecticut has been a bit less hostile to Republicans running in downballot races (although still not great). Last elected a Sec of State in 1990 (though nearly held it in ‘94, losing by only 2,000 votes) and our side held the Dem to a 53-44% margin in ‘10, the closest race in 16 years. Last won the Treasurer office in 1994 (and almost did so again in ‘98, but Paul Silvester turned out to be a crook). Held the current incumbent (who beat Silvester in ‘98) to a 54-44% margin this time, the closet race since ‘98. Comptroller we haven’t won since 1970 (though we nearly took it in 1990, losing by 51-49%), and lost it by 54-43% this time. Only Attorney General is the worst, not having held it since 1955-59. Alas, even with the parasite Blumenthal vacating it, we still only did about as well as the other races, with our candidate losing 54-44%.

1917 was the last time the MD Assembly had a GOP majority of 55R-47D (in those days, there were just 102 members, now there are 141) and Speaker (Herbert Wooden of Carroll County). The GOP numbers dwindled quite badly and actually by the 1958 elections, they held only 7(!) seats to the Democrats’ 116 (not even 6% of the body). Even in 1978, there were just 14 Republicans (and 127 Dems), which made it more like a Deep South state. We now are tied with the highest number of Republicans (43), which we previously had in 2002, although that is still just 31% of the body, at least 10%+ below where it ought to be.

As for the MD Senate, not since 1897 has the GOP won a majority there (John Wirt Randall of Anne Arundel Co. having been the last GOP Senate President). They came within 1 seat in 1917 and 2 in 1919, but otherwise dwindled after that, dropping down to just 3 members by 1958 (10% of the body) with the modern all-time low of 6 with the 1982 elections. We’re only at 12 seats now (or 26%), 2 below what we won even in 2006 (because the Dems narrowly won the open seat of the former Senate GOP leader Lowell Stoltzfus and beat Hispanic GOP incumbent Alex Mooney, now the state MD party Chairman, whom we’ve mentioned as a future successor to Roscoe Bartlett). I’m not definitively sure what accounted for Mooney’s singular loss (to a much older (by over 30 years) ex-Mayor of Frederick), although a cursory glance indicates that a lot of Republicans in his area (enough to tip the race) were quite angry with him, and he should’ve prevailed easily as the GOP won the area and other offices.

MD was always a politically peculiar state. I don’t feel like writing up a big history at this hour, though. It did behave more like a Deep South state after the Reconstruction era, but as it neared the turn-of-the-century, started to go more like its northern neighbors (albeit not heavily, but competitively). Baltimore itself, unlike nearby Philadelphia, was never a Republican city (occasionally electing a GOP Mayor). It remained competitive in the 1890s-1920s period, but clearly trended away back to the Dems, and almost overwhelmingly so by the 1930s (with a weird blip when in 1934 they elected a GOP Governor who was a strange fella named Harry Nice, only the 1st of the last 4 GOP Governors elected in the past 90+ years).

The Dems of that era, however, must be said that they contained a wide collection of across-the-board types, from the Baltimore Machine types (including Nancy Pelosi’s father, Tom D’Alesandro, Jr.) and execrable demogogue phonies like Millard Tydings and Conservative DINOs like the Byron family from Western MD.

The Republicans resurged at the federal level in the ‘50s (although not so well at the legislative level). Even in ‘58 with the near-bottoming out, they still had both U.S. Senate seats (occupied by Conservatives, IIRC), although the exiting Governor was the Baltimore ultraliberal RINO McKeldin (no surprise he left the state party in shambles). You had Agnew try to exploit the liberal Democrat vs. Conservative George Mahoney Democrat split to win the Governorship, and the GOP became more of the suburban party (although even when Nixon put Agnew on the ballot in ‘68, he did not carry MD). The GOP still did well in that all-too-brief period between 1966 to 1972 before Watergate smashed it.

Since then, of course, the Conservatives have drifted almost completely into the GOP, but have almost no presence in certain areas (Baltimore City, PG County), while a lot of the old liberal Republicans and suburbanites of DC have either drifted to the Democrats (or more Conservative elements moved away), and aside from race, vote scarcely differently than the inner-city types. Geographically, the GOP holds sway in more counties, but the sheer numbers of the gubmint worker parasites and welfare parasites in a handful of counties ensure that for the time being, the Dems will remain the majority party (and will never “realign” as it would’ve had it remained more Southern in character). Only if DC Blacks had remained there and MontCo & PG voted as they did during the Nixon era would MD have realigned.

Tydings was a jackass of the highest order. He also viciously maligned Joe McCarthy. I have yet to read M. Stanton Evans’s book (”Blacklisted By History”) from several years ago, but this describes Tydings role in investigating Communists in the State Department...

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=23388

McCarthy had a brief victory when he successfully helped defeat Tydings for reelection in 1950 (with the excellent Conservative Republican John Marshall Butler defeating him).

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