Not Too Smart Dan-O

A couple weeks back I chronicled how Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy was approaching the Nutmeg State's budget gap. It was all about "shared sacrifice" supposedly. He raised taxes and left the other side of the sacrificing - union concessions - as a TBD item. I was skeptical:

Someone somewhere, I'm sure, thinks that "shared sacrifice" indeed means just that, but to conservatives it is merely code for "tax hikes." We could be forgiven for thinking such thoughts based on union behavior. It is a reasonable conclusion that to unions and big government types "shared sacrifice" is a ruse strategy meaning "tax hikes and then dig in like the dickens to protect our goodies at all costs, and only as a last resort throw our newest members under the bus."

Well, as it turns out, I was dead on. The union workers have rejected Malloy's proposals and as a result Malloy will lay off 15% of the workforce. Frankly, I don't know how Malloy didn't see this coming. The 85% aren't going to vote themselves less goodies to save the bottom 15%, although that was his second mistake, the first one being to secure the tax hikes before he secured an accepted offer from the unions.