Chris Powell: Legislator’s drinking problem isn’t the biggest scandal; sneaky fuel tax; a No Labels presidential candidate?
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MANCHESTER, Conn.
By now nearly everyone who pays attention to Connecticut news knows of the state legislator who last year stood up to speak at the Capitol when she was drunk and lapsed into incoherence and who, a few weeks ago, was driving drunk when she crashed her car nearby.
The legislator has become so well known in large part because television stations have delighted in broadcasting video of her failing a sobriety test and getting arrested. There was nothing remarkable about the video. It was just like all failed sobriety-test videos except for the office of the person being arrested. She was hardly known statewide before her public intoxication; she was what in Parliament would be called a back-bencher. But now she is famous for being humiliated, and her legislative committee assignments are suspended.
Of course, she should have gotten treatment for her drinking problem before crashing her car and putting others at risk. But after the crash she quickly apologized publicly and began treatment. Beating an addiction is not easy; all may hope that she succeeds.
But the repeated broadcast of her arrest was only prurient and may not make it easier for her. It was as if the TV stations thought that she was Donald Trump.
Yes, after a long career as a grifter and four years of unprecedentedly disgraceful conduct in the nation's highest office, Trump may be irremediable. But the state legislator is just an ordinary person without bad intent who has a character weakness shared by many others, including others in elected office. There are many other things that Connecticut should be more ashamed of, but viewers of the state's TV news probably don't know.
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HIDDEN TAXES AGAIN: Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont and Democrats in the General Assembly are trying again to raise fuel taxes surreptitiously.
They are pushing legislation to authorize the commissioner of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to commit the state to interstate agreements requiring fuel businesses to buy and compete for a limited number of "carbon credits."
The cost to the businesses would be passed along in higher prices to retail fuel customers, who would blame energy producers and distributors, not the real culprit, state government.
The "carbon credits" scheme might be less objectionable if the legislature had to vote on such interstate compacts directly as ordinary legislation, if the governor had to sign it before it took effect, and if in doing so they were candid with the public about the inevitable result and explained why higher fuel costs were worth the supposed progress against "climate change."
But no. The Democrats want to pander to the climate extremists in their party without taking responsibility with everyone else.
If the governor and legislators want to raise fuel prices, they don't need any interstate compact. They can just raise fuel taxes in the open, as they have done before, though such taxes in Connecticut are already high.
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FIND AN ALTERNATIVE: According to The Washington Post, the No Labels political organization, which includes former Connecticut U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, aims to try to put its own candidate for president on the ballot in all 50 states in 2024.
No such candidate has been designated but the idea is to draw the likely major-party candidates in 2024 -- President Biden for the Democrats and former President Trump for the Republicans -- back toward the political center and away from their pandering to the left and right. Such movement might cause No Labels to endorse one or the other, refraining from offering its own candidate.
Biden supporters are said to be most afraid of the No Labels plan. One says: "The only way you can justify this is if you believe it doesn't really matter if it is Joe Biden or Donald Trump."
No, there is plenty of other justification. A third-party candidate can be justified if people believe, as many well may, that Biden and Trump are equally catastrophic, if in different ways.
To ensure its victory in 2024 one of the two major parties needs only to nominate a presidential candidate who is competent, moderate, relatively honest, sane and sentient.
But the parties don't yet seem to have noticed that Biden and Trump aren't.
Chris Powell (CPowell@JournalInquirer.com) is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.