The Obama Switcheroo, Connecticut’s Congressional Delegation, And the Band Played On

An Obamacare supporter had just finished explaining on Facebook that Obamacare, once fully implemented, would ring out of the private insurance market all those expensive and useless “substandard” plans when, hesto presto, Mr. Obama, under pressure from Democratic notables such as former President Bill Clinton to keep his promise that insurance purchasers will be able to keep their insurance plans, announced during one of his infrequent press conferences that everyone he had promised could keep their plans could, following his change of mind, keep their plans.

The Obamacare Facebook supporter fell silent and went on to other matters.

Wrinkles began to appear in the smooth winding sheets of the usual Obama supporters.  Jon Stewart impaled Mr. Obama on his news/comedy show The Daily Show:

Following Mr. Obama’s switcheroo, Mark Steyn wrote in National Review a paragraph that ought to be put to music and sung to the Beltway maestros at the president's next press availability:

“Ooooo-kay. So, if I follow correctly, the smartest president ever is not smart enough to ensure that his website works; he’s not smart enough to inquire of others as to whether his website works; he’s not smart enough to check that his website works before he goes out and tells people what a great website experience they’re in for. But he is smart enough to know that he’s not stupid enough to go around bragging about how well it works if he’d already been informed that it doesn’t work. So he’s smart enough to know that if he’d known what he didn’t know he’d know enough not to let it be known that he knew nothing. The country’s in the very best of hands.”

No one yet has criticized Mr. Obama for having defaulted on his implicit deal with the insurance companies. For as long as insurance companies have been in business, no insurance CEO has been able, prior to Obamacare, to force purchasers to buy plans they did not want or need. Obamacare, when fully implemented, will force young people into the insurance market by levying a tax (the Supreme Court’s verbiage) on those who perversely decline to purchase a product they do not want or need.

The implementation of this market magic has now been delayed by a year. When the country has moved beyond the mid-term elections, Obamacare once again will purge the insurance market of “substandard” products, prodding the young folk into the insurance market by means of fines (non-Supreme Court verbiage) levied against their best interests.

The Obama shape shifting caused one Hartford paper to lament that “every time Connecticut takes a step forward with health insurance, the federal government smacks us two steps back.”

In a year, however, the destructive Obamacare juggernaut will be back in business. The current “fix,” it seems to some Obamacare critics, is but a temporary measure on the way to a universal health care system.

Under a single payer system, private insurance companies, no longer able to compete with a public insurance system backed by taxpayer dollar, tend to become boutique insurance suppliers servicing clients who can afford higher premiums and tailored plans. The temporary “fix,” will create a necessary temporary uncertainty in the private insurance market – assuming major insurance suppliers swallow the bait thrown out to them by a beleaguered White House -- a roiling chaos almost certain to be followed by calls for a universal health care system.

Connecticut, home to major insurance companies and still heavily reliant on its insurance sector, used to be known as “the insurance capital of the world.” The uncertainty in insurance markets created by Obamacare, the relentless rhetorical bashing insurance companies have been subject to by the Obama administration, the prospect of universal health care and the consequent pairing back of insurance products, are bound to affect Connecticut disproportionately, both in terms of jobs lost and diminished tax revenues.

None of these very real possibilities have been considered seriously by the members of Connecticut’s Democratic U.S. Congressional Delegation, Obamacare enthusiasts all. Governor Dannel Malloy, rudely smacked down by Mr. Obama’s latest U-turn on his signature piece of legislation, appears unperturbed by possible job losses in Connecticut’s still vibrant insurance industry, not to mention consequent reductions in state revenue.

In the distance one sees, looming in the fog, the tip of a menacing iceberg. Aboard the ship of state, all is merry; the crew presses forward; the passengers are in a celebratory mood; the captain, champagne glass in hand, is about to toast to a successful journey; the band is playing a comforting waltz; the dance floor is crowded.

Full speed ahead.

Syria And The Collapse Of US Foreign Policy

A couple of months ago, President Barack Obama drew a red line in Syria. He said if Syrian strongman Bashar al Assad, the Middle East’s answer to North Korea’s runt dictator, were to use chemical weapons against his political opponents, this would catch Mr. Obama’s interest and trigger a military response.

At least, that’s what everyone thought he said.

A little over a year ago, at one of Mr. Obama’s infrequent news conferences, the president said:

“I have at this point not ordered military engagement in the situation, but the point that you [a reporter] made about chemical and biological weapons is critical. That’s an issue that doesn’t concern just Syria. It concerns our close allies in the region, including Israel; it concerns us [the US]. We cannot leave a situation in which chemical and biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.  We have been VERY clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the grounds, that a red line for us is if we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons start moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus; that would change my equation. [Here a reporter begins to ask a question: “Somehow under… And Mr. Obama continues] In a situation this volatile, I wouldn't say that I am absolutely confident. What I’m saying is that we’re monitoring that situation very carefully. We have put together a range of contingency plans. We have communicated in no uncertain terms with every player in the region that that’s a red line for us, and there would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front—or the use of chemical weapons. That would… that would change my calculations significantly.”

Mr. Assad, a host of American mouthpieces assured us, promptly crossed Mr. Obama’s red line and slew with chemical weapons some 1,429 people. Both the figure and the culprit are in dispute.

Following the mass poisoning, former Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who replaced Hillary Clinton as Mr. Obama’s Secretary of State, was dispatched to huff and puff like Mars, the Greek God of war. Here is Mr. Kerry in August pinning the tail on the donkey:

"What we saw in Syria last week should shock the conscience of the world. It defies any code of morality. Let me be clear: The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. By any standard, it is inexcusable. And despite the excuses and equivocations that some have manufactured, it is undeniable."

A military response was imminent. When Mr. Obama said -- “We have been VERY clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the grounds, that a red line for us is if we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons start moving around or being utilized” -- he wasn’t just whistling Dixie. The response, however, would be un-Bushian. It would entail no American boots on the ground.  It would not lead to a Vietnam War boondoggle. Mr. Kerry, who both fought in Vietnam and later protested the war in the company of “The Winter Soldiers,” surely was trustworthy on this point.

Not to worry, the assault targeting Mr. Assad’s war material would be limited in time and scope, “an unbelievably small effort,” Mr. Kerry later explained.

Some people were worried, among them Russian President Vladimir Putin. Assad threatened reprisals as American war ships were dispatched to the area. Mr. Putin also threatened reprisals. Israel stoutly prepared to defend itself from anticipated attacks. Great Britain’s Parliament, for the first time since 1782, voted down a war resolution introduced by its Prime Minister. France flourished a war flag then ran it down the flagpole. After pressure on all sides had been brought to bear against him, Mr. Obama agreed to send the proposal for a limited engagement to Congress. Democratic senators bailed on Mr. Obama; Republican war hawks supported him. In Connecticut, U.S. Representative Chris Murphy said niet; Senator Dick Blumenthal promised to mull the matter over before casting a vote. The world, as sometimes happens when Mars begins bawling from the rooftop, turned upside-down.

In a “Yes, the earth is flat” moment, Mr. Obama denied that HE had laid down a red line:

"First of all, I didn't set a red line. The world set a red line. The world set a red line when governments representing 98 percent of the world's population said the use of chemical weapons are [inaudible] and passed a treaty forbidding their use, even when countries are engaged in war. Congress set a red line when it ratified that treaty. Congress set a red line when it indicated that in a piece of legislation entitled the Syria Accountability Act that some of the horrendous things happening on the ground there need to be answered for. So, when I said in a press conference that my calculus about what's happening in Syria would be altered by the use of chemical weapons, which the overwhelming consensus of humanity says is wrong, that wasn't something I just kind of made up. I didn't pluck it out of thin air. There's a reason for it."

And then, quick as the flick of a serpent’s tail, a miraculous thing happened: Eirene, the Greek Goddess of peace, Pax among the Romans, gave Ares, Mars among the Romans, a boot in the arse.

War hawk, peace hawk, war hawk Kerry, during a press availability in London, answered a question – Under what circumstances might this march towards war be averted? – by making what a press spokeswoman later would term a throw-away, purely rhetorical  remark. “Sure, he [Bashar al-Assad] could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week - turn it over, all of it without delay and allow the full and total accounting, but he isn't about to do it and it can't be done.”

Mr. Putin intervened with Mr. Assad and then proceeded to exploit an entente. Syria and Iran, both enemies of the United States, are client states of Russia. The proposal casually tossed of by Mr. Kerry suddenly became a reality. Mr. Assad acceded to the Putin-Kerry proposal to turn over his chemical weapons to a United Nations agency, aborting a vote in Congress authorizing Mr. Obama’s belligerency.

The Congress, called upon by Mr. Obama to lay its fingerprints on a resolution giving the president authority to bomb Syria, let out its held breath, blowing off the roof of the Capitol building and flattening the Jefferson, Lincoln and Washington monuments.

The White House later announced that the same proposal had been spurned by Mr. Putin a year earlier. Now amenable to the proposal – given certain revisions -- Mr. Putin made arrangements with both Syria and Iran to supply both counties with new arms. Very likely, the turnover of chemical weapons from Syria to the United Nations, traditionally a playpen of autocratic regimes unfriendly to the United States, will not be able to be verified while Mr. Assad is at war with his opposition. As a condition of the entente, Mr. Putin has stressed the importance of U.S. disengagement. Translation: The U.S. must not ship arms to the enemies of Mr. Assad, while no such prohibition would encumber Mr. Putin. Such would appear to be the conditions of a Putin brokered entente between the United States and Syria. It was an offer Mr. Assad could not and did not refuse.

Among the winners in the serendipitous deal brokered by Mr. Putin, other than Mr. Putin himself, are Syria and Democrats in the U.S. Congress, who narrowly missed a bullet. In the absence of the Putin-Kerry-Obama-Assad entente, the Congress was poised to vote on U.S. intervention in Syria. Anti-war Democrats, weary of  the repeated engagements of U.S. troops in such corners of the world as cosmopolitan Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires, some Democrats were in the process of jumping Mr. Obama’s war ship and did not relish an up or down vote on Mr. Obama’s and Mr. Kerry’s “unbelievably small effort.” That vote almost certainly would have affected upcoming Congressional elections.

Having from time to time rented the American military out to international interests as an enforcer of what Mr. Obama has called “international norms,” the American people have become suspicious of lofty supra-national presidential claims.  In fact, there is no such thing as an international foreign policy – never had been, never will be. A nation’s foreign policy, throughout history rooted in sound distinctions between friendly and unfriendly states, becomes incomprehensible as soon as it is detached from national interests. For this reason, a president who fancies himself a world historical individual cannot be the architect of a rational national foreign policy. Unfortunately for the United States, Mr. Obama’s international ambitions are, to put it colloquially, too big for his nation’s britches. One does not expect clarity in foreign policy from a U.S. president who seems incapable of making proper distinctions between the friends and enemies of the United States.

The intentions of Mr. Putin, who rarely strays from what he thinks may be the national interests of Russia, are far more lucid. The United States having rented its military might to international interests, has now permitted its foreign policy to be kneaded and shaped by Mr. Putin. Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry are mere onlookers leading, as always, from behind. 

Republican Prospects

During the last presidential election, Republicans put up against a popular president a candidate, Mitt Romney, who had a deep and admirable political and business history. Republicans were surprised when President Barack Obama, perhaps the most progressive political candidate since progressivism was showcased in a serious way in the 1912 national election, walked back into the Oval Office unruffled and unscathed.

The election was supposed to have pivoted on the economy – stupid. Instead, a majority of voters, overlooking economic indicators that almost certainly would have sunk the prospects of a lesser candidate, were persuaded to give Mr. Obama a second chance.

For Republicans, the “take-away” from the election ought to have been: Social issues trump economic issues – stupid.

During the last election, especially in Connecticut, Republicans had managed to keep a ten foot pole between themselves and social issues, while Democrats joyously embraced the notion of a paternalistic state. Mr. Obama had managed to cobble together a new coalition that gave him a significant margin in the election. He pulled others with him into office, especially within Connecticut and the New England states. Moderate Republicans – left of center on social issues – lost heavily to progressive Democrats disguised, for purposes of the election, as left of center traditional Democrats. After the election, the masks quickly came off.

No one should have been surprised at the magnitude of the losses for moderate Republicans in Connecticut and throughout the Northeast. The moderate Republican has been a species slated for extinction for a couple of decades. When Chris Shays lost his bid for the U.S. House in 2008, he was the last left of center House Republican in all of New England.

Barry Goldwater used to joke that if you lopped off California and New England, “You’ve got a pretty good country.” Connecticut, for all practical purposes now a one party state, has been effectively lopped off and added to the Democratic basket as an economic basket case.  All the state’s Constitutional offices are held by Democrats; the Democrats have controlled the state Senate since 1996 and the state House since 1986; and with the ascendancy of Dannel Malloy to the governor’s office in 2011, the Democrats were able to breech the so called Republican gubernatorial “fire wall’ for the first time since Governor William O’Neill had occupied the office. The clean sweep has made it possible for Mr. Malloy effectively to marginalize Republicans in the General Assembly. Republican leaders in the legislature were not permitted to put their fingerprints on either of the two budgets cobbled together by Mr. Malloy, progressive Democrats in the General Assembly with knives in their brains and SEBAC, the coalition of Connecticut unions authorized to negotiate contracts with the state.

The media in Connecticut -- for ideological and business reasons warmly attached to the Democratic Party – only lately has begun to notice that the state is slipping beneath an economic receding tide. The news that Connecticut had come in dead last among the 50 states in economic growth, according to a Bureau of Economic Analysis report made public on the day following the close of the budget session, was greeted by the state’s astonished left of center media with a gasp of astonishment. Business reporter for the Hartford Courant Dan Haar wrote, “In 18 years of following economic reports daily, this is the most shocking piece of news I've seen, period. As a bombshell, it rivals the $2.2 billion loss posted in January 1989 by Bank of New England — heralding the region's worst recession since World War II.”

Considering the nearly universal left of center bias of the state’s media, Republicans – if they ever should successfully raise a barricade against improvident spending – will not find the media on the right side of the fortification.  Connecticut’s media is uniformly convinced that hard times necessitates a strong central government to spur the economy by diverting tax dollars gathered from businesses already flagellated by burdensome regulations and high taxes to other promising companies the directing state regards as fruitful “investments.” The unitary state and high taxation invariably leads to a self-defeating crony capitalism in which taxpayers, rather than company investors, are forced to bear the burden of failure while one percenters enjoy infrequent successes.

Democrats this year have increased spending about 10 percent, when economic indicators show a flat-lining economy. They have imposed on the state the largest tax increase in its history. They have abolished the death penalty following a horrific multiple murder in Cheshire, which was followed by an even more horrific mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School. (The shooter in that instance committed suicide; but, had he survived, Connecticut would have been forced to incarcerate the 20 year-old Adam Lanza for life. The death penalty abolition was passed by a cowardly, election conscious General Assembly that left in place the punishment for 11 prisoners on death row in clear violation of a principle underlying all jurisprudence pithily stated in Latin: Nulla poena sine lege – “Where there is no law, there is no transgression.”  Reporting on debates in the House of Commons, Samuel Johnson drew the proper corollary from the centuries old legal doctrine: “That where there is no law there is no transgression, is a maxim not only established by universal consent, but in itself evident and undeniable; and it is, Sir, surely no less certain that where there is no transgression, there can be no punishment.”)

Somewhere in this mush of progressivism an effective Republican counter campaign awaits birth. Whether Connecticut Republicans can tease from it a message that will spark a cleansing rebellion in Connecticut’s cities and towns depends ultimately upon the indispensable three M’s of any successful campaign: message, money and media.

Obama’s Problem, And Ours

It happens to the best of presidents. Sometime during the second term of popular presidents, the American people begin to bid goodbye to their chief executive, at which point the president begins to think of his legacy and hires a ghost writer to memorialize his time in office for future generations. Ground is broken, if only in the president’s mind, for a future library.

President Barack Obama is a popular, twice elected president. Some of his programs, however, never have been universally admired even within his own camp, which now begins to show stress fractures. Mr. Obama’s political methodology is, unsurprisingly, that of a left wing Chicago street organizer. During his presidency, Mr. Obama has spent an inordinate amount of time on the bully pulpit attempting to sell round pegs to square-hole purchasers in Congress. And he’s spent a great deal of money he does not have.

This parting of the ways, the fond farewell, often begins in Congress when the usual shakers and movers are gathered together in a room with the president and an idea or strategy is broached that, in the president’s first term, might have been greeted with loud hosannas and exuberant assents. Now it hangs in the air, a danger to the future prospect of all in the room. The actors in the room then shoot furtive glances at each other, and all but one suddenly realizes that there is but one lame duck among them. Time will smile upon the lame duck; his admirers within the fourth estate will continue reverently to mention his name in whispers. But ice will be in the air. The purposes of the president and the purposes of his loyal partisans will no longer be the same.

Josh Kraushar of the National Journal, an offshoot of The Atlantic magazine, generally regarded as left-liberal, examined the failure of Democrats to pass a mild version of gun control legislation. Some Democrats look forward to using the defeated legislation in future campaigns against benighted Republicans; and indeed, President Obama started the ball rolling moments after Democratic Majority leader Harry Reid pulled the bill because he could not summon the requisite number of votes in the Democratic controlled U.S. Senate to pass it.

“But the failure of Democrats to pass gun legislation (in a Democratic-controlled Senate) for a future presidential nominee to use against Republicans,” Mr. Krausher wrote, “makes the issue a lot less potent. One can imagine Hillary Rodham Clinton trying to shame, say, Marco Rubio for opposing a gun law that could be later claimed to have reduced crime. But without any law passed, it’s hard to imagine the gun issue being nearly as resonant as it is today in the wake of the horrific killings in Connecticut. And with Democrats being a significant obstacle to its passage, it muddles the message even more… Simply using the bully pulpit and making emotional appeals isn’t enough–it takes legislative know-how and a good working relationship with Congress, two areas this White House has struggled with since its difficulties passing a health care law and persuading the public of its merits.”

Even Maureen Dowd, a reliably left of center columnist for the New York Times, found it “unbelievable that with 90 percent of Americans on his side, he [President Obama] could get only 54 votes in the Senate. It was a glaring example of his weakness in using leverage to get what he wants. No one on Capitol Hill is scared of him.”

A few of the more obvious dents in the president’s armor would include: the continuing recession, the failure of the Obama administration to stimulate the economy with crony capitalist artificial stimulants, the inability of the administration to honestly confront the murder of an American ambassador and others in Benghazi and Obamacare – a very expensive baby step in the long progressive road to universal health care, at the end of which healthcare in the United States may come to resemble the health care dispensed at the Veteran's Administration hospital in Newington.

The head of the US Veteran's Affairs, retired Army General Eric Shinseki, came to Newtown recently to tout a new computerized processing system that some expect will shorten seemingly interminable wait times on claims. Standing at his elbow, in sight of the cameras, was U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal: “Among the most common complaints I get is the seemingly endless delays," Mr. Blumenthal said.

Among Mr. Blumenthal’s complainants is veteran Paul Barron: “I've been waiting three years for disability, I'm trying for 100%. I got Hepatitis C from the shots they give you in the Army.”

Backlogs and government administered programs go together like “a horse and carriage,” as the song has it.

The gun control legislation recently passed in Connecticut has resulted in a spate of gun purchases and a paperwork backlog for state police, who must approve the purchases. The backlog on transfer applications for gun ownership has soared from 1,000 in December to 62,000 following passage of the most severe gun regulations in the nation.

State Police Col. Danny Stebbins, who has been in communication with Governor Dannel Malloy’s Office of Policy and Management  “every other week regarding how to address the backlogs” told a wide-eyed legislative committee, according to a report in CTNewsJunkie, that the backlog had not been anticipated. “All of these things are behind because we don’t have people to keep up… all this will come with a cost,” Mr. Stebbins said. Some of the tasks, he added, could be done by civilian personnel.

So it may be with Obamacare: Who knew?

What Didn’t They Know And Why Didn’t They Know It?

There has been a journalistic breakthrough in the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass murder case.

It’s always a hopeful sign when journalists rub the sleepy seeds from their eyes and wake up.

Some in Connecticut appear to have been aroused by a story that first appeared in the New York Daily News – significantly NOT in any Connecticut media watering hole. A few days ago, Rick Green of the Hartford Courant speculated on his blog, “Maybe the state police owe us some official details about what happened — before we change laws and spend a lot of the public’s money.” In the future, after all the legislation affecting legal gun ownership has been rolled out, signed, sealed and delivered, the question foremost in everyone’s mind will be, “What didn’t they know and why didn’t’ they know it.”

“Everyone” would include the news community; the two governmental panels assigned, one by the governor and another by the General Assembly, to bring home the data on the basis of which legislators might produce a bill preventing future mass murders of mothers, school children and teachers; the many politicians, both in Connecticut and elsewhere, who have steadfastly insisted that Sandy Hook should be the impetus for legislation that will keep us safe from mass murderers; and most especially the families of the victims in Sandy Hook who, all along, have been hoping the General Assembly and governor might produce preventative legislation.

The journalistic breakthrough occurred in a story filed by Mike Lupica of the New York Daily News.

“What investigators found,” Mr. Lupica wrote, “was a chilling spreadsheet 7 feet long and 4 feet wide that required a special printer, a document that contained Lanza’s obsessive, extensive research — in nine-point font — about mass murders of the past, and even attempted murders.

“’We were told (Lanza) had around 500 people on this sheet,’ a law enforcement veteran told me Saturday night. ‘Names and the number of people killed and the weapons that were used, even the precise make and model of the weapons. It had to have taken years. It sounded like a doctoral thesis; that was the quality of the research.’”

Partial information about the “active murder investigation,” the often repeated formulation of Lieutenant Paul Vance of the Connecticut state police, leaked out of a conference in New Orleans, where people in the know, mostly police investigators, were sharing information with other people in the know. Up to this point, great pains had been taken to assure that authorized data remained bottled up. Most journalists live in the hope that the truth will out –eventually. The truth usually follows in the train of everything else; it’s often the last actor on the stage before the curtain is rung down.

Adam Lanza, it appeared from the New Orleans conference, was a studious killer well versed in the methods of other mass murderers. His beau ideal of the perfect mass murderer was Norway’s Anders Breivik. Connecticut Commentary first mentioned Mr. Breivik in a blog and column titled “Sandy HookShould Teach Us How To Think” way back in December.

Mr. Lanza apparently was trying to beat Mr. Breivik’s record of 77 dead. Owing to the arrival of first responders armed with substantial firepower, Mr. Lanza fell short of the mark he had set for himself, having committed suicide after murdering 27 people, including his mother. Newtown has since set aside enough money to provide all its schools with armed personnel.

The data that leaked out of the New Orleans conference is important. Diagnosis and data are always important for, say, doctors addressing a disease or legislators writing laws. A law is a prophylactic, a legal preventative. There are no fewer than three commissions charged with sifting through the Sandy Hook data so that legislators might write reasonable laws to prevent future Sandy Hooks. BUT THERE IS LITTLE AUTHORITAIVE DATA that any responsible legislator might consult in writing such a law.

And why not? Well, Mr. Vance will tell you that the “criminal investigation is ongoing.” It may be completed in June, long after all the insufficient prophylactic laws have been written. Will those legal remedies, based on partial or doubtful data be effective in achieving deterrence?

Mr. Breivik was not deterred by Norway’s capital punishment law because Norway has no such law. Connecticut abolished its capital punishment law shortly after a mass murder in Cheshire committed by newly released prisoners, only months before Mr. Lanza took up arms against his mother, 20 school children and 6 teachers.

The General Assembly is proposing to add to a long list of proscribe weapons yet another weapon, the AR-15, produced here in Connecticut and the most often purchased sporting rifle in the United States. Will that do the job? Grave doubts have been raised, not only by members of the NRA, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy’s bete noir of the moment. Most recently, U.S. Senate leader Harry Reid has doomed a federal ban on assault weapons, possibly over the hearty objections of Mr. Murphy and other Democrats in Connecticut who think that state laws prohibiting weapons are insufficient to stop importation from other states.

At the time he shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School, Mr. Lanza was armed with two semi-automatic pistols – the weapon of choice in most cities, including Chicago, murder capital of the United States and the political nursery bed of President Barack Obama – and a shotgun (left in the car – WE THINK – “ongoing investigation,”don’t you know) that would have been as devastating as the Bushmaster rifle he used.

If Mr. Lanza had survived, Connecticut would not have been able to execute him, because there is no capital punishment law in Connecticut prescribing execution for mass murderers or terrorists. Should there be such a law? Tried on terrorist charges in Norway, Mr. Breivik was declared sane by a panel of five judges and sentenced to 21 years in prison, a sentence that can be repeatedly extended by 5 years so long as he is considered a threat to society.

The two repeat offenders who murdered a family in Cheshire could have received early release credits under a program initiated by Mike Lawlor, Governor Dannel Malloy’s Under Secretary for Criminal Justice Policy and Planning. Indeed under Mr. Lawlor’s early release Risk Reduction Credit Program, two separate prisoners given early release credits already have committed murders in Meriden and Manchester.

The unavailability of authorized hard data on Mr. Lanza’s multiple murder spree should alarm legislators who are poised to add to a growing list of banned weapons yet one more weapon in an effort to deter such crimes as have been committed by Mr. Lanza and Mr. Breivik. Are such legal placeboes palliatives rather than real solutions to real problems?

 

Everyone in Connecticut – those who fear for the safety of children, legislators, the families of the victims, the tribunes of the people -- should be insisting that the criminal report be released right now. Tomorrow will be too late.

U.S. Senator Chris Murphy on Energy: Who needs it?

U.S Senator Chris Murphy has made a contribution “to the German Marshall Fund think-tank's Brussels Forum event in the Belgian capital,”according to Public Service Europe.

The discovery and utilization of shale natural gas in the United States, according to the newly elected progressive senator, has given lawmakers a" lazy way out" of making commitments to green technology. "It provides a very convenient excuse for half of the US Congress to sit on the sidelines when it talks about real investment in green energy. I think that's a tragedy."

An “absolute political logjam” on green energy has been produced, according to Mr. Murphy, by the "immense power of global warming deniers and this created a political barrier.

"You already had an enormous political barrier to a major investment in green technology, which is this debate that only happens in the US about the science of global warming. And then on top of it, you've got the convenience of a new enormous stability with respect to shale gas production.

"Many of us believe that the only way that you really incentivize a true green energy revolution in the US is to do what many countries in Europe have done, which is create a real domestic marketplace for it. And you do that either through capping the amount of carbon and allowing people to trade or by putting a new price on carbon with a tax. That can't happen in our political context today."

Let’s take it bit by bit.

The reason energy costs are high in the United States is that there is a product deficit, largely owing to efforts made by legislators such as Mr. Murphy to artificially hike the cost of energy by depriving the market of present resources such as energy from shale extraction. The relatively new technology of fracking is not so much a “lazy way out of making commitments to green technology” as it is an effort to supply a necessary product that is, Mr. Murphy may have noticed, very much in demand. If you increase the product, you reduce the price. Mr. Murphy favors high energy costs because the high cost of energy is a political spook-on-a-stick that can be used to force people to demand so called green energy.

The political logjam in the U.S. Congress and elsewhere has not been caused by an anti-green war on an undeveloped technology. The struggle for low product pricing has been around much longer than green technology. In a competitive free market, product pricing is determined by what Adam Smithy used to call “the invisible hand,” the sum of purchases made by citizens who are not bullied into choosing products by government economic overseers.

The cost of energy in Mr. Murphy’s own state is a drain on business. Among the 10 most expensive states in combined energy costs,Connecticut ranks second, just behind Hawaii, according to some reports the cultural and political nursery bed of President Barack Obama.

Should a bill slowly making its way through the General Assembly pass into law, Connecticut may leap ahead of Hawaii in the national race to cripple the energy sector. As an incentive to encourage forms of energy acceptable to progressives and environmentalists, the state legislature is proposing a bill that would tax oil 1.5 cents per gallon in the first year following passage, increasing by one percent a year until the tax reaches 3.5 cents per gallon in 2015. The tax haul would then be placed in an Energy Efficiency Fund that homeowners may draw upon to underwrite the cost of weatherization, clean burning furnaces and solar panels. Of course, every dedicated fund in the state – including pensions – are either under financed during hard times or raided by legislators before election to reduce deficits arising from their improvident spending. Mr. Obama has recently announced the formation of a similar fund, an Energy SecurityTrust (EST) that would fund clean energy research and development.

Connecticut is a small state that could be energy independent were it to rely on a variety of forms of energy production, including nuclear. But alas, the progressives and the greens in Connecticut are nuclear averse. When Dominion chose Virginia rather than Connecticut as a site for a new nuclear plant, no tears were shed in the governor’s mansion. So long as the price of energy in Mr. Murphy’s state remains high, other low energy cost states will continue to poach Connecticut businesses, established entrepreneurs and recent graduates of the state’s high cost educational establishments.

Shale gas is a natural gas found trapped within shale formations. The governor of Mr. Murphy’s state, not an anti-green, has announced his love affair with this form of energy. So ardent are Governor Dannel Malloy affections that he recently proposed to provide tax credits to home owners in Mr. Murphy’s state who are prudent enough to switch to a lower cost, less polluting form of energy. The tax credits presumably are an effort on the part of Mr. Malloy to tickle the fancy of energy consumers in Connecticut, many of whom will be marching to the polls in a couple of years to vote either for or against Mr. Murphy’s continuance in office, always assuming that voters in Mr. Murphy’s state have not fled to other states that rate much lower than Connecticut on a list of high energy cost states.

It is always possible that Mr. Murphy, a new arrival in the beltway, is very busy mastering protocol in the U.S. Senate. He may have missed the messaging from Mr. Malloy. Or possibly he has not yet had an opportunity to put out feelers to Mr. Obama, whose administration believes that increased shale gas development WILL HELP REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, an eventuality that may not grievously disappoint the folks who received Mr. Murphy’s pro-green missive at the German Marshall Fund think-tank in Belgium.

Malloy On The Stump

It should surprise no one that Governor Dannel Malloy is on the road again selling the usual product. This time, because elections are looming, he will be followed by Republican candidates for governor anxious to peddle their own prescriptions for what ails us.

Returning from a Middletown town hall meeting, though some in the audience objected to the format, Mr. Malloy sent around a sermon to the Hartford Courant. He began by noting that “Every budget is about setting priorities. That's true for every family in Connecticut, especially during tough economic times. It is equally true for state government.” Indeed, are we to suppose that President Barack Obama has set no priorities because he had presented no budget to Congress during his first term?

When middle class families in Connecticut encounter hard times, they cut back on spending, a remedy for budgetary red ink unknown in Washington and many states, including Connecticut. That is because workers in the private sector in Connecticut cannot force their employers to raise their wages. In this respect, private enterprise is qualitatively different than government. When a government runs into hard times, it may raise taxes and usually does. That is because governments find it painful to say “no” to those who use and provide their services. Independent Governor Lowell Weicker responded to a pre-income tax deficit by instituting a new income tax. Governor Dannel Malloy’s Democratic forebearers, Governors Ella Grasso and O’Neill resisted the effortless solution to which Mr. Weicker and Mr. Malloy so easily succumbed. Tax raisers in Connecticut are always careful to sugar their bitter pill with a bit of honey: “We don’t like taxes any more than you do, honey.” But they slather on the taxes anyway, heedless of predictable consequences. Connecticut’s present budget is three times larger than Mr. O’Neill’s last pre-income tax budget, and the bottom line increase in our budgets is a true measure of spending increases.

So then, the precipitous increase in budgets strongly suggests that the priorities of the governors who followed Mr. O’Neill lay in raising taxes rather than in cutting spending. Mr. Malloy’s tax increase was the largest in state history, and his spending cuts, to judge from the massive revenue increase in his first budget, were not commensurate with his tax increases -- which, come to think of it, is the very definition of “shared sacrifice,” Mr. Malloy’s campaign slogan when he first ran for governor.

In his latest sermon, Mr. Malloy notes that he has become an old hand at town hall meetings, having “done more than 30 of these town hall events since taking office.” He values such gatherings not only because they give him an opportunity to peddle his product from a bully pulpit, but more importantly because “they present the best opportunity for me to listen directly to the concerns of my fellow Connecticut residents.” And “Based on what I heard in Middletown, it is clearer to me than ever that many people share some simple, common-sense perspectives on what our state needs.”

Fortunately for Mr. Malloy, what he hears from citizens at these town meetings conforms precisely to his own prescriptions, which he is certain will bring prosperity and good fortune to the middle class in his state: “Connecticut's middle class doesn't need any more burdens. The middle class needs some breaks,” especially in these difficult days following “the worst recession since the Great Depression, and with a national economy that continues to grow too slowly.”

George Will’s definition of a “need” – a want that’s 24 hours old – is especially pertinent in the Malloy administration.

Surely in the course of 30 Connecticut town hall meetings, someone must have whispered in Mr. Malloy's ear that cuts in spending proportional to his tax increases might help middle class tax payers balance their own budgets. God, we are told, whispers to us in the whirlwind because He wishes us to attend to his message and wants us to learn how to listen. Perhaps Mr. Malloy has not been attentive to the whisperings of the state’s middle class: He is a very busy guy, and never busier than when he is telling the middle class to cough up a few more bucks he might distribute to Connecticut’s prosperous insurance companies, one of which is moving its in-state operations to South Carolina.

The simplest and truest way to give the middle class a break is to reduce their taxes – or, at the very least, not to raise their taxes –thus leaving them in command of their own salaries and futures. Mr. Malloy has done quite the opposite.

But never mind honey, here comes the honey: “That's why my budget contains no new taxes and puts us on a path to reinstating the sales tax exemption on clothing valued under $50. And that's why my budget would do away with the single most burdensome, most regressive and most unfair tax in our state — the car tax.”

Ah yes, the car tax. The car tax is a levy imposed by, collected by and spent by town governments. A short time after Mr. Malloy imposed upon Connecticut the largest tax increase in its history, the Yankee Institute, a right of center think tank, published a list of Mr. Malloy’s new taxes, many of which were regressive. Any imposition levied on a taxpayer who cannot comfortably pay the tax without depriving himself of necessary income is a regressive tax. Mr. Malloy’s revenueincreases spanned 25 categories of taxes and eliminated exemptions in about 37 different categories. The elimination of town property taxes on cars worth less than $28,571, which municipalities depend upon to finance their operations, is an invitation to municipal governments to either raise property taxes on middle class owners of houses or to cut town budgets. It takes little political courage for state politicians to eliminate someone else's tax. If Mr. Malloy wants to help the middle class by reducing state taxes, the list produced by the Yankee Institute presents some golden opportunities for him.

Property Tax Regressive?

“Regressive,” as any practicing progressive knows, is the opposite of “progressive.” Theoretically, a progressive income tax is levied on those who, in the words most often used to defend the tax, can well afford to“pay their fair share,” the fairness of their share to be determined, naturally, by progressives. The sole purpose of the progressive income tax is to shift the burden of tax payments from the poor to the rich.

During the war years, Franklin Roosevelt, spurred on by progressives, signed into law the “Revenue Act of 1935,” a “wealth tax” that raised the federal income tax to 75 percent on incomes over 5 million. The 5 million, as it turned out, was but a foot in the door. Under the administrations of President Barrack Obama and Governor Dannel Malloy, millionaires have come down in the world, and anyone who makes a quarter of a million per year is considered, for progressive tax purposes, a millionaire.

By today’s standards, Mr. Roosevelt’s “fair share” would be considered unfair by anyone but socialist President of France François Hollandeand perhaps American economist Paul Krugman, one of Mr. Obama’s economic cheerleaders. Author and talk show host Chris Mathews, the guy with tingly leg, also is eupeptic on all things Obama, but he is not an economist.

In the Obama economy, some things have changed, partly because of inflation; the dollar just ain’t what it used to be. And though it takes far fewer bucks to make a millionaire, Mr. Obama’s income tax rate increase is far less than that of Mr. Hollande and Mr. Roosevelt.

When Governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal proposed replacing his state’s income tax with an augmented sales tax, he was whipped by Mr. Krugman as an anti-progressive. “Such a move,” Mr. Krugman wrote in his blog at the NewYork Times, “would shift taxes from the rich to the poor, who are disproportionately hit by the sales tax.”

A progressive tax theoretically is a deprivation on the rich, while a regressive tax – a sales tax, say – is a deprivation on the poor. In reality, the very rich escape many taxes. When Republicans several years ago proposed a flat income tax that would fall equally on the stupendously rich Warren Buffet, the prince of Berkshire Hathaway, and his tax beleaguered secretary, while eliminating at the same time special exemptions enjoyed by crony capitalists, they were hooted out of the halls of Congress by progressive san culottes.

A property tax is progressive rather than regressive because it cannot be levied upon those whose economic circumstances to do not permit the ownership of property. The poor, as a general rule, don’t own property. Therefore, the property tax, the primary revenue generator for towns, is not unusually regressive. The sales tax, falling like the gentle rain on both the poor and the rich, is a regressive – i.e. non-progressive -- tax. It is also a broader based more dependable tax, which is probably why Mr. Jindal prefers it to the less dependable more narrow based progressive income tax.

In the halls of Connecticut’s General Assembly, it is being whispered that yet another tax increase may be necessary to balance the state’s chronically out of balance budget. The new Speaker of the House, Brendan Sharkey, has stepped forward to explain that a sluggish national economy and higher governmental costs have punched yet another billion dollar hole in the state’s revenue bucket.

And therefore the state may be forced to reduce municipal aid, Mr. Sharkey told more than a 100 state and municipal leaders and social service advocates at a state budget forum at the Capitol, which will prompt municipal leaders to raise property taxes or cut services. During his first tax bump, Mr. Malloy and dominant Democrats in the General Assembly held the towns in the state harmless. But “the days of being able to hold cities and towns completely harmless while dealing with the state's fiscal woes likely,” according to one report, “are over.”

“The property tax,” Mr. Sharkey told the property tax reliant mayors and town administrators, “will be the crisis once again.” According to the report, which summarizes the Speaker’s chat with the frozen faced municipal leaders, the Speaker went on to say, that“Besides harming low-income households the most, the regressive levy also places a heavy burden on small businesses and discourages economic development here.”

While it certainly is refreshing to hear any Democratic leader in the General Assembly frankly admit that taxes may be harmful – which is why Mr. Malloy in his first budget arranged his tax increases in such a way as to hold the towns “harmless” – the property tax certainly is not more regressive than the cornucopia of new taxes Mr. Malloy instituted, according to Mr. Krugman, the economic guru to progressives.

It is the state and federal government that has put the towns in crisis by imposing upon them costly state mandates. Town leaders do not have the political power to force the state to remove these yokes from their necks. And expensive state and federal mandates, along with poorly funded pensions and equally expensive benefit and salary increases enjoyed by teachers and municipal workers, have driven up so called “regressive” property taxes.

The chief reason why Mr. Malloy and dominant Democrats in the General Assembly are now considering voiding their often repeated pledge during campaigns to “hold towns harmless” from punishing tax increases is that the state needs the money to cover budget deficits caused by decades of improvident spending, and Democrats are loathed to punish those who consistently vote them into office by cutting increases in salaries and benefits.

Property taxes are not especially regressive. If Republicans were to propose a dollar for dollar reduction in costly state mandates for every dollar in revenue “saved”by the state in reduced municipal assistance, they just might have a useful campaign issue on their hands, for Democrats in the General Assembly fear a loss in municipal votes almost as much as they fear a temporary loss in state revenue from general and effective cuts in marginal tax rates and business taxes. Mr. Sharkey has proposed that “some of the big ticket items we impose" on communities -- funding for special education, for instance -- should be shifted to the state, but such a transfer of payments would not result in significant relief to taxpayers because municipal tax payers are also state tax payers.

Connecticut s Fiscal Cliff

Newly re-elected U.S. Representative Jim Himes, a moderate Democrat operating out of Connecticut’s 4^th District, has said concerning the nation’s so called fiscal cliff, “Washington understands how severe the consequences of the fiscal cliff are. When I saw House Speaker (John) Boehner speak two days ago, I thought he was conciliatory and traced the outlines of a deal."

Of course, the perceived severity of fiscal cliffs depends to some extent on one’s political vulnerability. Not all severity is created equal, and Democrats ensconced in Connecticut’s safe districts, such as U.S. Representatives John Larson and Rosa DeLauro, are apt to confront the fiscal cliff with less trepidation than Mr. Himes.

A recent study conducted by the Defense Technology Initiative should serve the members of Connecticut’s all Democratic Congressional delegation as a splash of cold water in the face. The study presents a sobering picture of Connecticut’s own fiscal cliff that should give vertigo to all freethinking and rational politicians in the state.

We learn that the amount of defense contracting in Connecticut has increased by 51 percent since 2003. The state’s defense contracting represents 5.1 percent of its economic output, not a negligible figure.

Should a lack of agreement between President Barack Obama, Democrats who control the U.S. Senate and Republicans who control the U.S. House trigger the automatic cuts implanted in the Budget Control Act of 2011, the effect on Connecticut would be severe, resulting in a loss of 36,000 to 50,000 jobs at a time when Connecticut is losing jobs to other states that are more business friendly.

The state treasury, presently more than $300 million in arrears according to a story in CTMirror or $690 million to $1 billion for each of the next two years according to a Bristol Today story, would also be hard hit as the state tumbles off the national fiscal cliff, since the defense industry contributes about $860 million towards Governor Dannel Malloy’s yet unbalanced budget. No one seems to know whether Malloy’s budget has EVER been in balance. According to Comptroller Kevin Lembo’s most recent report, the state has recovered only “31,400 (just over one quarter) of the 117,500 total nonfarm jobs lost in the March 2008 - February 2010 recessionary downturn.”Of the funds received by Connecticut from the federal government and parceled out to contractors, approximately $9.5 billion is spent on customary defense products: Virginia Class submarines, Black Hawk Helicopters, jet engines, turbines, other military components and the like. The spin-off economic activity generated by the contracts is even larger, about $22.4 billion, which affects about 101,000 jobs, according to the Defense Technology Initiative report.

Of the funds received by Connecticut from the federal government and parceled out to contractors, approximately $9.5 billion is spent on customary defense products: Virginia Class submarines, Black Hawk Helicopters, jet engines, turbines, other military components and the like. The spin-off economic activity generated by the contracts is even larger, about $22.4 billion, which affects about 101,000 jobs, according to the Defense Technology Initiative report.

Of course, the depth of the national “fiscal cliff” may be reduced if the president, the Democratic controlled U.S. Senate and the Republican controlled U.S. House are able to reach a satisfactory compromise on the self-elapsing Bush era tax cuts, otherwise known as tax increases.

But even assuming an end to the game of chicken, there must be defense cuts. Obama– who won the election -- needs the defense cuts to apply as a continuing payment on the Democrat’s new and expensive social programs, primarily Obamacare. And Connecticut’s all Democratic congressional delegation, having pledged its troth to Obama’s vision of the future in recently concluded state campaigns, is hardly in a position to offer at the alter a strenuous opposition to either Obama’s proposed defense cuts or increased taxes on quarter-millionaires or the increases in spending that will be plugged into a future Obama budget – presuming the president surprises everyone and offers a passable budget in his second term.

Unfortunately, Connecticut’s congressional delegation may not be ideally positioned to rescue the state from severe defense cuts. Its two U.S. Senators are relatively new arrivals and do not have enough political chits in the game – unlike departed U.S. Senator Chris Dodd and the departing U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman – to affect spending priorities in their state’s favor; and Connecticut’s House members will be joining an assembly controlled by Republicans averse to a crippling regulatory environment and increased business taxes that may, they predict, lead to a double dip recession and adversely impact an agonizingly slow recovery.

All of which leaves Connecticut in limbo, not to be confused with Lembo, who appears to be able to forecast deficits much more ably than the Malloyalists surrounding the governor, or indeed the governor himself – who recently promised no fewer than three times in one media availability that there will be no new tax increases in the coming budget – a dubious cry that recalls George H. W. Bush’s no new tax pledge and former Governor and Spendthrift Lowell “The Maverick” Weicker’s prophetic insistence that a state income tax would incinerate to Connecticut’s economic infrastructure .

The Perpetual Progressive Campaign

So, the elections are over -- for a too brief interlude.

The grumps who have been complaining all along that there is no longer a breathing space between elections are right. Forward! as they say in the progressive Beltway. In our time, politics itself has become a form of electioneering. That’s what is wrong with it. President John Kennedy governed; President Barack Obama campaigns.

Campaign finance reform was supposed to settle some of these problems.

Karl Kraus, a great German critic and a contemporary of Sigmund Freud, use to say that psychoanalysis WAS the disease it purported to cure; so with campaign finance reform and other political bromides. There are only two ways to shorten the political season. The first is borrowed from Shakespeare, with an important revision: “First thing we do is shoot all the lawyers,” Shakespeare’s Dick the Butcher said. A modern Butcher might be inclined to say the same of politicians, a good number of whom are lawyers. The second less dramatic solution is to term-limit politicians. While this more practical measure may not eliminate political corruption –neither does campaign finance reform, by the way – it will distribute political corruption more fairly among yet uncorrupted new political recruits and weaken the stranglehold incumbents have on political office.

One reporter wrote in a story about Mitt Romney’s failed campaign that the campaign for governor of Connecticut begins the day after Romney’s concession speech. And so it has. Governor Dannel Malloy has claimed that Obama’s victory in some sense vindicates his own political program.

That is a weak argument. In Connecticut, there was little to no turn-over in the General Assembly following the election, although Republicans in the state made some of Malloy’s questionable initiatives the center piece of their own campaigns. Actually, Republicans have been too cautious in their criticisms, and programs are vindicated, ultimately, by their consequences.

Mike Lawlor’s early release program, for instance, is a ticking time bomb. Once a prosecutor for the State's Attorney Office in New Haven and later co-chairman of the General Assembly's Judiciary Committee from 1995 to 2011, Lawlor is Malloy’s undersecretary for criminal justice policy and the chief architect of Connecticut’s early release Earned Risk Reduction Credits program.

It’s only a matter of days, weeks and months before another violent criminal let loose early under Lawlor’s ill-conceived program murders another store clerk: So far, that has happened twice since the program was launched, ineptly and without proper political vetting. Republicans are right to insist that early release should apply only to non-violent criminals. But Malloyalists operating under a one party regime tend to be hard-headed about their palliatives. Like most politicians, they are effectively reproved only after the plane has crashed into the mountain.

Some parallels may legitimately be drawn between Malloy and Obama.

Both are chief executives; both are progressive Democrats. During the early part of Obama’s first term, Democrats controlled the White House and both Houses of Congress. Malloy, the first Democrat elected governor in more than twenty years, presides over a General Assembly controlled by Democrats. Obama has yet to produce a budget, and this has alarmed some people who believe that state and national budgets define both political programs and the nation’s destiny. Malloy stiffed Republicans during his first budget negotiations, as did Obama, and hammered out a budget in collusion with SEBAC, the union organization charged with negotiating contract terms with the governor and Connecticut’s ex officio third party. Malloy, the Malloyalists, the Democratic dominated General Assembly and union representatives pushed through a “fair share” budget that relied – unfairly, say its critics – on the largest tax increase in state history, following close on the heels of the second largest tax increase in state history, the Lowell Weicker income tax. Obama is promising a “fair share” budget as well. So far, he has not been able to pass any budget. Both in Connecticut and in the nation, recent elections have not substantially changed political configurations. These are the obvious parallels.

There are important differences as well.

Here and there, one glimpses hints, foggy intimations, that Malloy is not willing to surrender the WHOLE of Connecticut’s government to progressive sans culottes who favor the despoliation of the rich, the one percent of those in the state who believe in a kind of egalitarianism that differs only in degree from that of Sylvain Marechal, the utopian socialist who declared in his Manifeste des Égaux (Manifesto of Equals, 1801) "Let the arts perish if needs be. But let us have real equality!" Antoine Lavoisier, the "father of modern chemistry," was executed during the French Revolution in 1794. The revolutionary judge who sentenced Lavoisier to death proclaimed, "The Republic has no need of chemists." Such was the purity of egalitarianism, a modern construct, at its headwaters.

Here in Connecticut, we yet tremble before such perfection. Hope and change beckons.

What Republicans Can Do

Nationally, most Republican election analysts called it wrong. Moments following the election,Dick Morris repented in sackcloth and ashes. He had missed something that one might call the New Democratic Majority, which is on the order of missing Gibraltar while sailing the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula:
 

“By the time you finish with the various demographic groups the Democrats win, you almost have a majority in their corner. Count them: Blacks cast 13% of the vote and Obama won them 12-1. Latinos cast 10% and Obama carried them by 7-3. Under 30 voters cast 19% of the vote and Obama swept them by 12-7. Single white women cast 18% of the total vote and Obama won them by 12-6. There is some overlap among these groups, of course, but without allowing for any, Obama won 43-17 before the first married white woman or man over 30 cast their vote. (Lets guess that if we eliminate duplication, the Obama margin would be 35-13) Having conceded these votes, Romney would have had to win over two-thirds of the rest of the vote to win. He almost did. But not quite.”

Behold the New Democratic Majority – Blacks, Latinos, voters under 30 and single white women allured by Obama’s promise of a Planned Parenthood abortion center in every pot.

Sean Trende’s analysis in Real Clear Politics is much different than Morse’s. Trende does not deny the importance of capturing neglected minorities but, he points out, Romney’s challenge suffered most from a lack of white voters.

The imminent arrival of what Republicans used to call, a note of disapproval in their tone, the Nanny State -- a federal government octopus that wipes every tear with dollars taken from the idle rich while directing the flow of business in what has been quaintly called the private economy -- is supposed to hold this alliance together.

Parts of the alliance will fall away as the country limps along on crutches that date from the election of 1912, the high tide of the Progressive assault on common sense and the entrepreneurial spirit of the country. One likes to think that the powers of resistance of the average American to warmed over socialist schemes floating in the brain of Eugene Debs will survive the next four years in good repair; we are not Venezuela yet, even though Hugo Chavez, along with the progressive President of Russia Vladimir Putin, has given the thumbs up to Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, all promoters of the New Democratic Majority. The New Democratic Majority has been forged in the crucible of Chicago politics. Whether all or some of its component parts will survive after Mr. Obama and Mr. Axelrod leave the scene is very much an open question.

On the home front, Connecticut, far more than the national government, has become a one-party state. The template for the one party state may be found both in Venezuela and Connecticut’s major cities, Bridgeport serving as the state’s Ohio. As Connecticut’s major cities go, so goes the state.

Polls show that Dannel Malloy, the first Democratic governor in Connecticut since the administration of former Governor William O’Neill and the architect of the largest tax increase in state history, remains unpopular. However, voters who prefer an“Anyone but Malloy” candidate in 2014 may be looking at a “No Exit” sign. The governor has put together his own “New Connecticut Democratic Majority.” And the way in which his last budget was passed leaves little room for doubt that Mr. Malloy can cobble together a tax and spending plan without including the state’s Republican minority in the General Assembly. The architects of Connecticut’s last budget were Malloy and his Malloyalists, a Democratic majority in the General Assembly that pre-approved Mr. Malloy’s first budget and then invested the governor with plenipotentiary powers to readjust it, and state unions, dubbed by this writer at the time as Connecticut’s “third political party.”

Connecticut Democrats need surpluses to keep tax consumers well fed and to convince those unfamiliar with the way economies actually perform in the real world that the governor can easily create jobs by giving away millions in tax dollars to large profitable companies adept at crony capitalist bribery.

The jobs Mr. Malloy has claimed to produce in Connecticut do not grow on a jobs tree in the governor’s mansion adjacent to the money tree from which the governor, the Malloyalists and Democratic progressives in the state legislature pluck their millions to support grateful crony capitalists. Every dollar consumed in Connecticut taxes is a bucket of water taken from the deep end of the pool and poured into the shallow end by political shysters who hope to convince a majority of voters that the operation will increase the net amount of water in the pool, thus opening the door to unparalleled prosperity.

The surpluses Democrats will need to perpetuate this political fraud must come from somewhere, and taxpayers in Connecticut, already saddled with the largest tax increase in state history, cannot afford further increases – which means Mr. Malloy and the Democrats will do one of two things come budget time: either slash spending deeply, not likely, or pass on the tax burden to municipalities by cutting state support.

The loyal opposition in the General Assembly should begin soon to confront the imposture. They have only their chains to lose, and a world to win.

What if She Wins?

Linda McMahon may or may not win her campaign to replace Senator Joe Lieberman in the U.S. Congress. Everyone agrees that her race with media favorite Chris Murphy is a close one. Although it is a presidential election year, Barack Obama appears to have lost some of his luster since his last election, his coattails having been clipped by four years in office during which the recovery promised by the president has yet to surface. The latest Gallup poll shows the president trailing Republican Presidential candidate MittRomney by seven points, not a propitious sign.

If Mrs. McMahon is elected to the U.S. Senate, her critics in Connecticut – pretty nearly every commentator in the state – will put down her win to dollars spent. In this regard, Mrs. McMahon is the exception in Connecticut.

All the seats in the state’s congressional delegation are held by Democrats who are able, by virtue of their incumbency, to outspend Republicans by indecent margins. Senator John Larson of the impregnable 1st District routinely outspends his Republican opponents; and until recently Rosa DeLauro, like U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal a millionaire, has effectively sidestepped her Republican opponent, Wayne Winsley.

When Mrs. McMahon lost to Democratic superstar Blumenthal, her critics were quick to point out that the $50 million misspent by Mrs. McMahon could not purchase an election. Dollars, it was said, didn’t matter. Assuming a win, Mrs. McMahon’s critics this time will insist that she bought her Senate seat on the cheap by flooding the state with ads that personally attacked her Democratic opponent, who in the past had some difficulty in paying his rent and later his mortgage; no big thing, happens all the time said editorials endorsing Mr. Murphy.

Finally, her critics will insist that Mrs. McMahon has no mandate to govern because she refused to engage during her campaign on important issues of the day, choosing instead to cling feverishly to a narrow campaign message forged by her handlers.

Mrs. McMahon may have picked up this trick from Mr. Blumenthal who during the final days of his campaign, following disclosures that the attorney general had lied several times concerning his non-service in Vietnam – no big thing – sedulously avoided his critics. Mr. Blumenthal’s entire senatorial campaign was a reprise of his glory days as Connecticut’s suit happy Attorney General, a public persona he finds it convenient to maintain as U. S. Congressman; as senator and the nation’s premier congressional consumer advocate, Mr. Blumenthal now is toying with a bill thatwould affect advertising for scooter chairs.

There is some justice to this last charge brought against Mrs. McMahon. The first rule of politics for Republicans running in a reliably blue state is this: If you don’t give the jackals red meat – say in the form of a carefully crafted position paper on President Barack Obama’s murderously ineptforeign policy blundering in Benghazi – the servants of the status quo in the state, who are legion, will sup on the marrow of your bones. Better to give them the red meat.

Mrs. McMahon easily might have avoided the presumption that she is light-headed on congressional matters by a few carefully thought out speeches on a) the economy, b) foreign policy and c) a topic of her own choice that might have thrown some light on her fitness to serve in what has been called, before it descended into a campaign Ponzi scheme constructed in Chicago, the greatest deliberative body on earth.

Both Mrs. McMahon and Mr. Murphy have become prisoners of their handlers. Mr. Murphy’s entire campaign bears the imprint of a “made in Chicago” mafia hit: Republicans hate women; Mrs. McMahon is morally destitute; crony capitalism directed from the White House will lift both the country and Connecticut from imminent ruin; the cure for bottomless debt is more Beltway spending; taxes should be increased on quarter millionaires to pay for improvident spending; salafists can be our friends, provided we lather them sufficiently with diplomatic kowtows and saccharine speeches concerning the brotherhood of man; bills passed on to creditors and young people expected to pick up the tab for bankrupted national programs will never come due; Wall Street alone caused the Bush economic collapse – all juvenile nonsense designed to spare the human brain the necessity of critical thought.

Convinced – not without reason – that Connecticut’s left of center media had iced the political sidewalk hoping for a an embarrassing pratfall on matters of little importance, Mrs. McMahon shut the door on the media during her primary run against former U.S. Representative Chris Shays. Money in that race was crucial; Mr. Shays hadn’t enough on hand to challenge Mrs. McMahon vigorously, and he made a serious error in judgment when he declined to ask delegates to the Republican Convention in Hartford to support him. Mrs. McMahon opened the door a crack during her debates with Mr. Murphy and agreed to talk with the editorial board of a major newspaper that in all probability will endorse Mr. Murphy.

As a result of all this, Connecticut citizens are left with anti-campaigns directed by political outliers who certainly will not bear the consequences of their efforts. The buck, as usual, will fall most heavily on the general populace, which is what happens when democratic institutions suffer irreversible breakdowns.