Talking Budget Cuts

Short and sweet.

If the town side budget that failed was a recommended 6.3% increase, and the school side budget was a recommended 2.97% increase, why are so many people talking about cutting equally from both sides? If you cut 1.5% from both sides, then the education side would represent an increase of 1.47% and the town side would have an increase of 4.8%, which is still more than 50% more than the education side was asking in the first place.

Add to this consideration of the disproportionate insurance increases on both sides. The education side is seeing an insurance increase of 14.2%, and the teachers have a very high co-pay of 17%, up from 15%.

The town side is seeing an insurance increase of 43.8% and the town workers, though it varies have a significantly lower cost share in their benefits.

Most of the coverage has sloppily averaged the two and said that the town was seeing a 28% increase. That number protects the town side at the expense of the teachers.

How does this possibly makes sense?

McMahon v. Blumenthal

And then there were two!

The Dems Choose Blumenthal

The GOP Chooses McMahon

Mind you, Simmons insists that he's not out of it and that he will move forward with the primary process, but he's already lost a lot of momentum. It will be interesting to see how this play out, but I don't hold out a lot of hope for the more reasonable and un-glamorous candidate on the conservative side.

I think Blumenthal has this, even though he has had a very bad week. Although I would love to have a woman senator from Connecticut, I will not vote for any woman to fill that spot. This particular woman has had a lurid career in a part of our culture that does not improve the general discourse or its civility. I will be voting for Mr. Blumenthal, I believe, as of this moment, because even though he seems to have been somewhat disingenuous about his military service, he is a proven defender of the people in terms of environmental issues and consumer protection.