Why is there such support in the General Assembly for exempting retirement income from the state income tax?

Social Security and pension income is already exempt from the state income tax for single filers with incomes less than $75,000 and couples with incomes less than $100,000, and state Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, proposes to exempt all retirement income.

The idea is that exempting all retirement income will encourage retirees to stay in Connecticut instead of moving to warmer and income-tax-free states like Florida and Texas. But of course such a rationale could apply to all taxpaying Connecticut residents. It is a rationale for repealing the state income tax entirely.

Other than their potential to constitute another special interest for politicians to pander to and draw campaign contributions from, what makes retirees so deserving of favor? Income is income, whether derived from wages, savings, investments, pensions, or Social Security, and federal and state policy, pursuing fairness, long has imposed progressive taxation on most income -- that is, higher rates on higher incomes.

So why should someone in Connecticut with $200,000 in retirement income pay less in income tax than someone with only $75,000 in wage income? While many retirees are poor, progressivity in income taxation protects them just as it protects all poor people, even as older people are the wealthiest age demographic in the country, many owning their homes free and clear, having discharged their mortgages.

Meanwhile younger people may have rent or mortgages to pay and children to raise -- the taxpayers of the future.

Connecticut can respect its elders without disparaging everybody else.

Vindicate free expression

Another culture-war case from Colorado has reached the Supreme Court, as an internet site designer is defying the state's anti-discrimination law by refusing to design a site for a same-sex wedding. The designer contends that same-sex marriage contradicts his religious beliefs and that compelling him to design a site for it violates his First Amendment freedom of expression.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority seems inclined to rule for the designer. Though claims of freedom of expression used to be supported by the political left, the left now advocates ever more compulsion by government and suppression of dissent, and so is predicting disaster if religious objections trump anti-discrimination law.

But there really doesn't seem to be much danger here. If the First Amendment exempts creative expression services from anti-discrimination law, such an exemption could not plausibly be claimed for anything else. No one is likely to get away with refusing to sell toothpaste or cereal to anyone on account of sexual orientation, race, or other characteristics protected by law. Nor, these days, are many merchants and service providers likely to want to forfeit such sales.

Besides, other than those trying to annoy their ideological adversaries, who would really want the creative services of someone whose heart wasn't in the work?

No one will have any trouble finding a designer for a same-sex wedding's internet site if the designer in Colorado is allowed to follow both his profession and his conscience.

Another forever war?

How do Americans think the war between Russia and Ukraine should end? More important, how much are Americans willing to pay to achieve that end?

For like most wars, this one will end when the money and resources for it run out, and Ukraine will be able to pursue its maximalist objectives -- like return of the Crimea -- only if the United States and Western Europe keep supplying unlimited military equipment and cash.

Russia already had seized the Crimea before the war began, and Ukraine and the rest of the world were living with it. That annexation by Russia, like Russia's recent annexation of Ukraine's eastern provinces, constituted aggression against a member of the United Nations, but the U.N. is doing nothing about it.

So how much more war, and more risk of a wider war, do Americans want to pay for? Do they want another forever war like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, or a realistic settlement? Exactly what are America's war aims? Americans should demand that the president and Congress tell them.