Nip and Tuck
or Driving Us to Drink
If you reside in Connecticut, fiscal irresponsibility and political malfeasance are facts of life. If you doubt that, if you don’t know what I mean, or if you’d like more examples than you can shake the proverbial stick at, I invite you to go to the home page for this account and type Connecticut in the search. If you do that, you’ll be forgiven for thinking one of two things: (1) The majority of Connecticut’s voters have been lobotomized, or (2) they don’t care about anything, including the law and their money.
In reference to people who made issues of insignificant things at the expense of — or to distract attention from — more important things, Grandpa O’Brien loved to say, “They’re chasing the mice while the elephants are running down the street.” That notion was made manifest in a recent article in The Connecticut Mirror that ran under this headline: “More nips are being bought in CT — some advocates are worried”.
Since no one in Connecticut, particularly its voters and its politicians, has a sense of irony, we can be sure the diminutive triviality of nips was lost on everyone. And we can be equally certain the cause and effect in this paragraph was lost, too:
Connecticut’s “nickel-per-nip” program … adds a surcharge of five cents to any bottle of alcohol under 50 mL … commonly known as “nips” On average, 93.8 million nips have been purchased each year, with that number trending upwards … That comes out to an estimated average of 39 nips per person of legal drinking age per year … Liquor stores are purchasing more nips to sell, and Connecticut residents are consuming more. Compared to data from the program’s second six-month reporting period in 2023, sales over the latest reporting period in 2025 increased by 1.6 million nips … [nips] are easy to hide and consume and drive on the road and throw them out the window.
What that suggests, of course, is that the very few fiscally astute people who live in Connecticut are worried about their taxes, the cost of living, and some of the shit going down in the General Assembly that they’re buying nips, stashing them in their cars, drinking them as they drive over Connecticut’s roads that are bad enough to be ranked as the 16th-worst in the nation, and tossing them out their windows onto those roads as a decidedly unsubtle fuck you to their pals in Hartford.
Shenanigans
And what kind of shit might be going down in the Connecticut General Assembly? It depends what time it is. But here’s a sampling of some of the allegations being bandied about in the hallowed halls of Hartford:
Legislative earmarks are being funneled through nonprofits with no vetting or accountability (see “Laundering, Money”), leading to millions of dollars being disbursed every year without proper due diligence (see “Whipping, Pencil”). Here’s Exhibit A.
Bribery, extortion, and fraud in state contracting and operations: They point to federal allegations of bribery and extortion related to school construction projects and alleged pressure to cancel audits; although, as Edith Bunker said, “Not mentioning any names but pointing and whistling.”
Trials related to Medicaid and bank fraud, as well as extortion, concerning a Connecticut lawmaker, as well as a Bristol eye doctor, and the dude we were whistling about in #2.
Misuse of state resources and excessive personal spending by a Connecticut State Colleges and Universities Chancellor who mistook his job, his salary, and his expense account for a permanent vacation.
Election-related fraud and integrity issues, with the Bridgeport mayoral primary being just one example. Apparently, getting a convicted felon reelected isn’t as easy as it looks.
For your viewing pleasure, here’s a video about paying medical expenses for illegal aliens, rather than paying for special-education programs to benefit Connecticut citizens.
And last but not least, at least for now, a video about preventjng local and state law-enforcement officials from communicating with federal immigration authorities, even if the illegal aliens in Connecticut custody are guilty of crimes beyond entering the country illegally.
This is why, at the end of every session of the Connecticut General Assembly, all of the members in attendance sing “Ain’t We Got Fun” instead of the official state song, “Yankee Doodle”.
A Deeper Look
I found the subject of Connecticut’s nip tax (my term) so intriguing, I decided to dig a little more deeply than the bottom of the potholes the tax is supposed to fill. As I dug, I found an article in Hartford Business Journal from November of 2023 that said this, in part:
The program has contributed $8.9 million to Connecticut towns and cities … “Studies show that most litter from nips happens very close to where the containers are purchased,” said Lawrence F. Cafero Jr., president and treasurer of Three Tiers for Connecticut and executive director of Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of Connecticut Inc. “In just two years, this local solution has become a national model.”
Given his position, I suppose Larry “Big Nip” Cafero could be forgiven for exaggerating a tad. But according to Grok and ChatGPT, the number of states participating in that national model is, “Zero. Other than the state of Connecticut, no other U.S. state currently has a ‘nickel-per-nip’ program like Connecticut’s.” Well, ya can’t hate a guy for trying … or for lying through his teeth.
After another shovelful or two, I found an article in Connecticut Insider from May of 2024, written by Big Nip his own self, in which he doubled down on the bullshit:
This innovative program has been an undeniable success for Connecticut … In the Land of Steady Habits, we do not often devise an innovative program like this that can become a nationwide model.
In fairness to Big Nip, he may have been intending to pose this indirect philosophical question: If a program hasn’t been implemented by any other states, can it be considered a national model? Or maybe it’s just a matter of Big Nip’s shit luck that no one else has ever thought to ask the question.
Capital Conundrum
But here’s the part I find most fascinating: An article in The Hartford Courant from March 6th of this year contains a map that shows the Connecticut towns that sell the most nips per adult. Those are Putnam, with 111 nips purchased per adult per year, and Chaplin, with 129 nips purchased per adult per year.
According to the Putnam website:
This charming New England town … has the honor of having been voted as one of “15 Best Small Towns to Visit in New England” by Boston Magazine. Downtown showcases restaurants, retail shops, antique shops, theatre, and radio station. The Town and the Putnam Business Association collaborate to support and host annual community events such as outdoor concerts, river fires, parades, and fireworks, just to name a few.
While there isn’t similar information on the Chaplin website, I was able to find this:
Life in Chaplin … is defined by its rural charm, peaceful atmosphere, and strong sense of community … the town offers a quiet, country lifestyle with easy access to nature, outdoor recreation, and historic sites … Chaplin feels like a close-knit village where most residents own their homes and value privacy and tranquility.
I’d have expected larger cities with higher crime rates — like Bridgeport, Stamford, New Haven, Hartford, Waterbury, and Norwalk — to be consuming more nips than bucolic backwaters like Putnam and Chaplin. But perhaps the lower populations, the lower crime rates, and the quiet lifestyles of those elysian enclaves give their residents more time to think about the extent to which they’re being fleeced by the hustlers in Hartford. If so, they might require more palliative drinking than their bigger-city brethren. I don’t know.
But I do know this: All the nickel-for-nip programs in the world won’t make up for the criminal political malfeasance that costs Connecticut voters billions every year. Maybe the fact that people live here is some perverse, pecuniary manifestation of Stockholm Syndrome: If we’re not broke and drunk, we don’t know how to act.
Or maybe we just have to keep nipping to live with the fact that we’re broke.