Peter Thalheim

When can we stop making ever more laws, which make out daily lives more expensive or more complicated?

To build the party into the majority party in Connecticut, the CT GOP must stand for policy and campaign on policy to fight structural statism/racism

Governor Lamont should call a special session of the legislature and put through line items for all public charter schools approved by the Connecticut Board of Education, post haste.

Gov. Ned Lamont and the other marionettes for the New Big Tobacco, the marijuana industry, are galloping towards the legalization of high-potency marijuana for our children and adolescents through age 25. There is no debate on the wisdom of poisoning our children and adolescents, only talk of the money the state will earn.

Where will the Republican Party go in the post-Trump era after the illegal storming of the nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6? Who will the Connecticut GOP select as its next chair after its dutiful and long-serving Chair J.R. Romano resigned less than one week later on January 12, citing difficulty raising money? The Connecticut GOP could become a thought leader in our land and facilitate the raising of contributions across our fellow 330 million citizens.

I believe Republicans, Democrats and unaffiliated voters in Connecticut are so transfixed by the looming $70 billion in unfunded pension and health care benefits for present and past state employees that we don’t focus enough on the job being done — or not done — by our congressional delegation. But in my opinion our federal representatives seem to get a pass, as we don’t ask them about international issues.

We got rid of debtors’ prisons centuries ago, yet why do we allow the state to imprison our fellow citizens for working? As you know, we have licensing laws for many professions and for many of those professions that is a good thing. It is the extent to which we have licensing that sometimes raises an issue as special interests such as the profession itself or the trade schools get more restrictive rules imposed by the legislature to limit competition or enrich themselves at the expense of the citizen who only wants to work.

News Flash: Daniel Livingston, chief negotiator for the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition, (SEBAC) has stated that the 2017 SEBAC agreement should be upheld on legal, moral and economic grounds. These grounds end up endorsing our six point Blueprint to Save Connecticut, the only true fiscal and constitutional reform program in the gubernatorial race.

Dear Fellow Citizens: The recent effort to shift $550 million in debt from the City of Hartford onto the citizens of the State of Connecticut is illegal and is without authority under Article 1, Section 2 of our Constitution. It is about as effective as one drunken sailor telling the bartender that he will cover the bar tab of another drunken sailor.

For those who have been following its economic and tax fortunes, Connecticut has been lagging behind other states and has a millstone of unfunded pension liabilities around its neck. Depending on whom you ask, the unfunded pension liabilities for the State Employee Retirement System and the Teacher’s Retirement Fund are $39 billion, if government standards are applied, they are in excess of $100 billion if private sector accounting standards are applied. While Connecticut has contributed more to these pensions in the last few years, Connecticut at the same time has been losing population; seen more capital and high earners leave the state than enter the state; and the budget shortfalls continue unabated.