Money Doesn't Talk, It Swears

When Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington’s Continental Army at Yorktown, Virginia, in October 1781, history notes that the British fife and drum corps at the ceremony played a popular tune of the day, “A World Turned Upside Down.” In many respects, such was the state of the empire of King George III.

Upstart colonists, angered by a monarch who “erected a multitude of new offices, and sent …swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance,” declared their independence in the summer of 1776, proclaiming the function and purpose of government was to protect the ‘uninalienable rights (of)…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ Two hundred and fifty years later, how much happiness can we stand and how much can we afford?

Instead of government at all levels working for us, we toil to pay for it. Pick a program, be it local, state, or federal, and work through its budget, trying to understand how much is overhead and how much is initiative. We’ve been living hand to mouth in Norwich, and elsewhere, for too many years; we’re now eating our own fingers. Something wrong has got to be righted.

Last week, there were news stories about the 1.49% increase in the Rose City’s grand list—an increase that does NOT keep pace with the consumer price index, but all one of our (two) local daily newspapers wants to talk about is the paid vs. volunteer fire department pissing contest. Adult municipal leadership is in criminally short supply.

The Land of Steady Habits, as Connecticut likes to be called, has picked up some terrible fiscal habits, most especially unfunded mandates of all kinds used by Hartford to stick municipalities throughout the state with the check, while special interests celebrate preferred treatment and businesses and the middle class flee our borders in droves.

The government at all levels needs to be repurposed to best support programs delivering the best quality and lowest cost public services for our collective good. The public trust must stop being the public trough.
-bill kenny