Mark Boughton, Amelia Earhart, and a Wish to Eliminate the State Income Tax.

The History Channel thinks it has located evidence that aviator Amelia Earhart survived a July 1937 crash in the Pacific. The mysterious of Miss Earhart’s disappearance has inspired 80 years of speculation and searches. Now that the Peacock Network has resolved that mystery, here’s a tougher challenge. Find the plan in Republican Mark Boughton’s vague proposal to eliminate the state income tax. An island of thought in a sea of platitudes is not a plan. ”

“There is no simple, painless way with which to eliminate the state income tax. But I am committed to working with the best and brightest to restore Connecticut to its former glory,” Boughton writes in his hometown newspaper. He is correct that there is no “simple, painless way” to get rid of the tax that since 1991 has kept open the spigot of ruinous state spending. A pledge to work with “the best and brightest” is not a plan.

There is a terrible idea in the Danbury mayor’s Seinfeldian op-ed. It would remove education funding from our democratic institutions. That does not seem like a Republican plan. Binding arbitration–removing teacher salaries out of the democratic process–has driven spending higher at a far greater rate than the growth of the state’s economy. Boughton has been a driving force in the CCJEF lawsuit to take even more authority away from elected officials in making decisions on how to fund public education. He’s been in the forefront of those clamoring for for billions more spending on education, which is unlikely to allow the elimination of the income tax if Boughton and his leftwing allies prevail.

It is good for candidates for governor–and those exploring a race–to have aspirations other than personal ambition. This campaign is not a show about nothing. It requires more than fanciful wishes amidst a recitation of the milestones in Connecticut’s decline.