Can Lamont veto his own party’s delusions?

Even as the enlarged Democratic majority in the General Assembly schemed this week to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour and require businesses to give paid family leave to employees, the state Labor Department reported to Gov.-elect Ned Lamont that the state’s unemployment compensation fund is more than a billion dollars short of what it should have to handle the next recession.

Replenishing the fund will require an equivalent amount in tax increases on employers, quite apart from the costs of raising the minimum wage and awarding paid family leave.

Lamont says giving businesses the confidence to remain in or move to the state is crucial to stopping the state’s decline. But the looming unemployment compensation tax increase will combine with the gross underfunding of state government’s pension funds as a deadly deterrent to business.

In these circumstances raising the minimum wage and requiring paid family leave are delusional. But the Democratic majority in the Legislature has often been delusional. Is the new governor, a Democrat himself, ready to use his veto to snap legislators out of their delusion?

UConn video inspires: Music, the poet wrote, has charms to soothe a savage beast, so maybe it can even mollify people tiring of the arrogance, extravagance, and political correctness of higher education.

For this year’s holiday greeting video from the “multimedia” office at the University of Connecticut brilliantly showcases the amazing musical talent of dozens of UConn students who are shown playing and singing, in widely different formats, the carol “Deck the Halls” at locations around the Storrs campus.

While they’re only college kids, their performances are awesome, and being at a public university, they are not the sons and daughters of privilege but examples of the human potential that is everywhere in Connecticut, if not always appreciated and nurtured.

With state government languishing in financial trouble after many years of mismanagement, UConn’s holiday greeting video is an inspiring reminder of state government’s ability to elevate people when nonsense and venality are pushed out of the way.

Everybody should see it. It’s at the UConn Today internet site — and can be found with a general internet search for “UConn — Sing We Joyous All Together.” Joyous it is indeed.