Here in the gold coast region of Fairfield County the drive has always been to attract more Wall St and other financial businesses in favor of just about everything else. Trading was the business and Stamford, where the current governor hales from became essentially a company town for pushing tokens.  The factories and production that had made the city what it was had been driven out and the keys to the city given to the big money being made to push bigger money around. Well that could not be sustained and it hasn’t.

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This is typical of state politics. It’s called, let’s keep the state from growing under any circumstances.

http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-old-lyme-fra-blumenthal-0812-20160811-story.html

This is a classic case.  A small group of homeowners stopping needed infrastructure improvements regardless of the consequences to the rest of the state.  I know that many states have NIMBY problems, but Connecticut takes those problems to a whole new level. At this point it is virtually impossible to get vitally needed infrastructure improvements started, let alone completed. This has been a trend here in CT since the early 1980’s or so. Small groups of politically connected very vocal  citizens block a highway, pipeline, power plant, large store or other development or infrastructure improvement strictly on narrow self interest.  About 1/2 mile from me a quickly created “citizens group” was formed to “protect the Merritt Parkway” blocked a badly need interchange improvement.  It turned that this “conservation” group was the creation of a lawyer who owned a building next to the interchange who would have had cars passing a few feet closer to his building. Never mind the fact that the parkway was built in the 1930’s as a make work project and that the interchange desperately needs improvement if for no other reason than to prevent accidents.

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With Weicker’s income tax. Lowell Weicker’s income tax was supposed to save the state’s problems.  Instead it may have been the largest contributing factor in killing the states golden goose.  The legacy of the income tax is in businesses not started and jobs not created and a future that never came.

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