RUTHFULLY YOURS

Connecticut governor Dannel Malloy is a big fan of the meaningless political gesture. When it comes to virtue signaling, he prefers it to be as divorced from tangible consequences as possible. To the extent that his showboating can be timed to distract attention from Connecticut’s imbalanced budget and crumbling economy, all the better.

Last year, Malloy signed an executive order banning official travel to Indiana, which had just passed a Religious Freedom Restoration Act. He did this in response to the demands of precisely no one in his state. Somehow it never got through to the former Stamford mayor that Connecticut has had a RFRA of its own on the books since 1993. Turns out that Nutmeggers enjoy even sturdier religious-freedom protections than Hoosiers do.

Malloy must have enjoyed the afternoon of attention that the Indiana incident brought, because last month he leapt at another juicy opportunity to grab the mic and advertise his pristine virtue. This time it was North Carolina’s democratically elected legislature that no one in Connecticut was demanding be punished. Tar Heel State lawmakers drew the ire of righteous liberals everywhere when they passed a bill requiring that people use bathrooms and changing facilities according to their biological gender.

You could practically taste Malloy’s joy as he again reached for his executive pen and signed an order banning official travel from Connecticut to North Carolina. “This law is not just wrong,” he said. “It poses a public-safety risk to Connecticut residents traveling through North Carolina.” That’s right — a public-safety risk.

RELATED: Connecticut’s Progressive Nutmegs: Liberals Policies Are Driving a Great State to Economic Suicide

This week — just because why not — Malloy also banned non-essential official travel to Mississippi, because of a law passed there under the principle known as representative democracy. Conveniently, Mississippi is a state that no Connecticut official really needs to visit, and about whose legislature no Connecticut resident gives a flying finger sandwich.

These invitations to empty gesture couldn’t come at a finer time for Governor Malloy. You may think of Connecticut as a wealthy place, and you’re not wrong. It is the state with the highest per capita income in the country. But it’s also a basket case. Here’s a little rundown on just how well Connecticut is faring under Malloy’s leadership.

Connecticut has a $900 million, union-shaped hole in its budget that some Democratic state lawmakers would like to fill by seizing part of Yale University’s massive endowment. Malloy has been slashing services and warning that the milliony deficit will very shortly become a billiony one. The state’s ravenous public-pension system is only half funded. It swallows up $1.5 billion annually in public money, a figure my colleague Steven Malanga projects could double within a decade.

With all that red ink flowing down to the Long Island Sound, it’s not surprising that businesses such as General Electric are fleeing the bluest of the blue states. The multinational company announced in January that it would relocate its corporate headquarters from Fairfield to Boston, in part to escape Connecticut’s high corporate taxes and “inhospitable business climate.” The Tax Foundation ranks Connecticut’s business-tax environment 44th in the country.

RELATED: Taxes Chased GE Out of Connecticut

“Connecticut is a horrible state for business,” according to an anonymous CEO who responded to a 2015 Chief Executive survey. “The governor is anti-business and the economic environment he creates is confrontational. The roads and highways are in poor condition, and the state is fundamentally broke. The cost of living continues to rise and the governor raises taxes and spending and does not work to lower expenses.”

But hey, never mind about all that. Dandy Dan has something important to say about the terrible things that might befall you and your family in a Raleigh restroom or a Biloxi bed and breakfast. Pay no attention to the man behind the Capitol curtain.

Did you know that Malloy made an official visit to Ireland last year, where abortion is still illegal? I hope his Planned Parenthood friends don’t find out. He also found time for a pit stop in Germany, where prosecutors are currently weighing whether to drop a charge carrying a three-year prison sentence on a TV comedian for “insulting” Turkey’s president with a satirical poem. Now that’s the kind of place that poses a real danger to Connecticut people when they visit.

Vatch yer mout, Chollie.

Come to think of it, didn’t Dan Malloy and staff embark on an eight-day, taxpayer-funded trade mission to China in 2012? Yes, I think they did. And I’m pretty sure that it’s still significantly worse to be gay or transgendered in China than it is in Indiana, Mississippi, or North Carolina. Same-sex marriage is not legal in China and the depiction of gay characters on TV has recently been banned there.

Yet my guess is that Malloy won’t insist that Connecticut’s Kaman Aerospace turn down the recent order from China’s Department of Forestry for two $7 million heavy-lift helicopters. The good governor wasted no time taking credit for helping broker the deal with Chinese officials on that 2012 trip.

I sure don’t remember him making a special point of highlighting Beijing’s less-than-stellar record on gay rights or banning official travel to the People’s Republic until they bowed to his progressive demands. That’s the kind of criticism Democrats like Dan Malloy reserve for the real enemy.

Look, a squirrel!

— Matthew Hennessey is an associate editor of City Journal. Follow him on Twitter@matthennessey.