He plans on creating jobs here in Connecticut by investing in education and focusing on high tech industries and creating an "Economic Swat Team". Who can find fault with this? It all sounds innocent enough, but according to DeStefano's own website his plan to stimulate the economy will cost the taxpayers $375 million. This would be money well spent if by chance we actually got what we payed for, but one need only to look to the department of motor vehicles to see how government spends your money. Overpaid state employees with solid gold health, dental and retirement benefits, doing the absolute minimum because if you don't like it you can register your car in Rhode Island.
DeStefano also wants to raise the minimum wage. Those of you who may own a small business may wonder how he plans on creating jobs while artificially raising the price of labor. Good question. Labor like any other commodity has a market price. It's a shitty fact of life. It would be great if everyone made Oprah money but we don't, and few of us put as many butts in seats as Oprah does so I guess that's fair.
“I believe it’s wrong that people who work for a living in Connecticut are living in poverty,” said DeStefano. “Since President Bush took office the working poor in Connecticut - and elsewhere - is falling further and further behind. My proposal would create a Moral Minimum Wage – an assurance that the minimum wage always keeps up with inflation and that people who work hard will have the opportunity to make ends meet.”
Don't just love the language, moral minimum wage. It's alliterative and it's moral. It's also a pipe dream. If you raised the minimum wage tomorrow to $20 an hour a hell of a lot of people would find themselves out of a job, and guess what? Everyone of them would be poor folks. No one is meant to live on minimum wage even here in Connecticut where it's $7.40 an hour. Hell, it would be hard to make ends meet at twice that and I assure you he won't try to raise the minimum wage to $14.80 so this is all window dressing.
Another Destefano gem is his plan for universal health care called the The DeStefano Connecticut Cover All Now! plan. Again with the alliteration and an exclamation point. He must be a fan of Jeopardy!. Universal health care is like the Holy Grail to liberals everywhere, because if they could only get their hands around it, they could drink from the cup of power for generations to come. But this will not happen either. A look north to Canada shows us how well government controlled health care works, i.e. not so well. While it would be great to see everybody with health insurance, isn't there a way to make it happen with out involving government in it? Like make employer paid insurance premiums 100% deductible to encourage employers to provide it to their employees. I trust 50,000 small and large business to make the right decision and show accountability much more than than any government. DeStefano estimates that this will cost $350 million, he plans on paying for it by closing "corporate tax loopholes". Guess what John, there are other states that would welcome these corporations. If two or three large corporations relocate to North Carolina to escape your hostile business environment, how are we better off?
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His health care plan sounds like it's modeled after Maryland's. Maryland's plan relies on something called "the Wal-Mart Tax". Destefano's has an ad that prominently features references to Wal-Mart and the inadequate coverage they give to their workers. The thing is: Wal-Mart's coverage probably isn't very good but it's better than the health plan Destafano gives his own campaign workers!
Furthermore, Maryland's plan has just recently been found to be illegal. It's in violation of a federal statute called "ERISA". It'll be interesting to see if he pulls those ads.
And yet the Presdent affliated with which political party left office with a budget surplus and which one will leave office with a record deficit?
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