2/13/08/09 And You Thought Greenwich Roundup Was Hard On Hearst Newspapers.....Funny how Jodi isn't to blame

Can Kenny Dixon please show me the budgets that were put into law by a legislative override of the CT Governors veto?

OR

Is Conn Post's Ken Dixon the Dumbest Reporter in the State of Connecticut?

My Left Nutmeg

Just how stupid do you have to be to write this sentence:

"It you like this fiscal crisis, thank a Democrat. They have dominated the Legislature since 1997, when the $10.4 billion budget had a $263 million surplus."

That pearl of wisdom came from Ken Dixon of the Connecticut Post in his February 6 column. Now let's just start with the fact that this is the same character who referred to Congressman Jim Himes just after his election as "a forty two year-old blank slate". Yep, Harvard grad, Oxford Master's, Rhodes Scholar, Goldman Sachs exec, chairman of the Democratic Party in Greenwich, top national executive for a major affordable housing non-profit- yep, Ken, that's a blank slate, alright! A man entirely void of accomplishment. You nailed it, Kenny Baby!

So that Ken Dixon now blames the Democrats in the state legislature for engineering the current fiscal crisis. Nope, he doesn't blame George Bush's policies that plunged us into the steepest job losses since the end of WW II, that have seen per capita auto sales fall to those during WW II, that have bankrupted our banking system, that have decimated Wall Street, that resulted in the worst stockmarket performance for any president since Herbert Hoover, that resulted in the worst job creation since Herbert Hoover. Nope, Kenny D blames the majority Democrats in the Constitution State, even though the state achieved fiscal surpluses for years until this current national crisis broke out. And he doesn't blame congressional Republicans for shortchanging Connecticut by returning back to the state barely 69 cents on every dollar of federal taxes we send to Washington, the third worst mark of any of the fifty states. Nope, for Kenny D, none of that reality is important. That's all for those silly denizens of the "reality-based community" to consider. In Kenny D's journalistic Lalaland, none of that matters.

Now if Dixon were really interested in economics and why the state really shouldn't be trying to balance the budget right now, indeed, couldn't possibly balance the budget now, no matter how much it cut spending, he might like to read the recent column by Nobel Prize-winning economist and Princeton University professor Paul Krugman (another blank slate to be sure!). In the column "Fifty Herbert Hoovers", Krugman states:

Even as Washington tries to rescue the economy, the nation will be reeling from the actions of 50 Herbert Hoovers - state governors who are slashing spending in a time of recession, often at the expense both of their most vulnerable constituents and of the nation's economic future.
These state-level cutbacks range from small acts of cruelty to giant acts of panic...

...Let's step back for a moment and contemplate just how crazy it is, from a national point of view, to be cutting public services and public investment right now.

...It makes no sense to add to the problem by cutting public spending, too.

But, again, Dixon would have to give consideration to a blank slate and to facts and reality. Certainly not things he is wont to do.

Dixon's column continues:

"I must still be in withdrawal from the retirement of Bill Nickerson, the eloquent, eminently quotable Republican senator from Greenwich."

Now for those of you who don't know him, former Republican state senator Bill Nickerson, who retired late last year, might have been quotable, but in the General Assembly he was absolutely useless. A Republican in the minority, Nickerson never once introduced a bill that was passed into law. But to Dixon, he was a great legislator (and Jim Himes is a "blank slate"). Now Nickerson's successor, Republican Scott Frantz, who runs his family's hedge fund, in the midst of this state's fiscal crisis with its fiscal engine, the financial industry, on life-support or worse, is still pushing to eliminate the estate tax that only affects estates over $2 mn. Yep, even as towns across the state are cutting their education budgets, Republican Frantz wants to save money for multi-millionaires who are feeling no pain.

One has to marvel at the blissful ignorance that guides Ken Dixon's wondrous fact-devoid rodomontades. How wonderful to believe what you want to believe regardless of how false those beliefs are. And how sweet for Connecticut Post to be able to permit the likes of Ken Dixon to continue to write this stuff without any worries about subscriptions or whether or not anyone agrees with him in the communities the newspaper serves. This is the newspaper, after all, that endorsed John McCain, whom the people of Bridgeport rejected seven-to-one.

Just how out of touch does a newspaper or a reporter have to get before they both are sent down the tubes? Probably pretty out of touch, because Connecticut Post is part of a virtual newspaper monopoly in Southwestern Connecticut. So right-wing boobs like Dixon have nothing to fear. John McCain would make a great president, Jim Himes is a blank slate, Bill Nickerson's retirement is to be lamented, and the current economic and fiscal crisis in Connecticut is all the Democrats' fault....Absolutely.

Who needs reality when you're kicking back in journalistic Lalaland?

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