Malloy’s One Percenter Crony Capitalist Campaign Contributors

When Northeast Utilities CEO Thomas May talks campaign donations, his managers listen. But then, Governor Dannel Malloy’s crony capitalist friends tend to be effusive in their praise of their benefactor. "While he has accomplished much, there is more to do," Mr. May wrote in an e-mail to 50 of his managers. "Please join me in providing support to continue the work begun, providing new opportunities, and securing the leadership to make it happen."

Of battling Dannel, Mr. May enthused, “he battled through issues of historic proportions — from nature's wrath to one man's horrific actions," a reference to Adam Lanza’s slaughter of children in Sandy Hook Elementary School. Storm Sandy, of course, stood no chance when confronted with battling Dannel. And mention of Mr. Lanza by politicians in campaign modes cannot help but generate among the voting public a thumbs up for the politician and a thumbs down for Mr. Lanza.

Mr. May provided in his e-mail to his managers the nexus that tied Mr. Malloy to Northeast Utilities. The governor “has clear energy goals that align with our corporate mission and initiatives. He wants clean, reliable and affordable energy — so do we. He brought all appropriate stakeholders together to develop the state's first comprehensive energy policy. He understands the value of and is supportive of expanding access to natural gas… He is supportive of bringing clean, affordable and carbon neutral large scale hydro power into New England. And, he has been a supportive partner in our system hardening efforts and storm preparation initiatives."

Following these effusions, came the hard sell: “"Please make contributions payable to: CT Democratic State Central Committee — Federal."

Convinced by Mr. May’s irrefutable proofs of Mr. Malloy’s leadership and boundless energy in “continuing the work begun,” Mr. May’s employees ponied up. Campaign cash in return for political favors delivered is the heart and soul of crony capitalism.  The exchange, it should be noted, benefits both the crony capitalist suck-ups, who receive from the politician favors that tend to give them an advantage over his competition, and the politician, who magically creates the favorable impression that he is rescuing his state from the penury he himself has brought upon it through high taxes, union friendly agitation, which drives up the cost of labor, and excessive regulation, all of which tend to impact unfavorably smaller capitalist operations that do not have available to them the sycophantic resources of large corporations and quasi-public enterprises. 

NU contributors made their checks payable not to Mr. Malloy, the subject of Mr. May’s sycophantic appeal, but to “CT Democratic State Central Committee – Federal,” according toa copyrighted story in the Hartford Courant. And the managers were generous too. Campaign finance records show that $46,500 in contributions have been made by more than 20 NU executives in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the Connecticut Democratic Party following Mr. May’s appeal for funds on behalf of the heroic Mr. Malloy.

Since Mr. Malloy was the only person mentioned prominently in Mr. May’s appeal to his managers for campaign donations, one investigative reporter wondered, why were the checks to be made payable to the federal wing of Connecticut’s Democratic Party?

State campaign laws do not permit these kinds of campaign contributions. However, where there is a will, there is a way. Under federal campaign laws, more lax than the state campaign laws under which both Mr. Malloy and Mr. May are compelled to operate, a state party may appropriate and spend funds deposited in a federal account, provided the funds are used to support “get-out-the-vote activities” in connection with an election where a candidate for federal office is on the ballot, and never mind that such appropriations and expenditures also assist party candidates running for state office. The “federal option” is one of those campaign finance loopholes large enough to accommodate Santa Claus and his sleigh, outrigged with jingling cow bells and eight beefy and determined reindeer.

A brief consultation with NU lawyers confirmed that the company was operating within the confines of the law, according to NU spokeswoman Caroline Pretyman. Crony Capitalist Tom, Ms. Pretyman said, “consulted our internal legislative and legal affairs experts to determine where to direct any funds. There are rules and regulations that govern where donations can be directed when individuals do business with the state and the federal account is one that all NU individuals are lawfully permitted to participate in." Ms. Pretyman assured doubtful reporters that fatwas would not be issued against non-compliant managers.

Republican opponents of the governor, scandalized by such a blatant violation of the spirit of campaign regulations, might have responded to Ms. Pretyman in the accents of Mr. Bumble, a character in Charles Dickens’ “Oliver Twist,” Told that the law supposed that Mr. Bumble’s wife was acting under his direction, Mr. Bumble responded, “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass — a idiot". And if the law supposes that slippery politicians will not take advantage of loopholes engineered into the law by other slippery politicians, we may say, along with the practical minded and astute Mr. Bumble,” If the law supposes that, the law is an ass – an idiot.”  

Supreme Court Cleans Up Blumenthal’s Augean Stables

Last week, Connecticut’s Supreme Court overturned on process grounds a jury's decision that the state of Connecticut should pay $18.3 million to Computers Plus, a company that once operated out of East Hartford.

The jury found that the state – specifically, then quick-to-sue Attorney General Richard Blumenthal -- had defamed the owner of the company and violated her due-process rights. The jury’s multi-million dollar award should be taken as an indication of the depth of the state’s perfidy in driving Computer Plus out of business on a fraudulent claim of wrongdoing.

The jury award was later whittled down by another judge who, punitively in the interests of justice, moved the decimal point an integer to the left and reduced the jury’s award to $1.83 million.

Judges in Connecticut are loathed to incur the wrath of politicians, and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal had for 20 years been a very resourceful politician. Before Mr. Blumenthal killed Computer Plus, it ought to be noted, the company was a very successful woman owned small business.

Mr. Blumenthal is now a U.S. Senator in Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional delegation. During his progress up the greasy pole, Mr. Blumenthal had crawled over heaps of bodies in order to arrive at his exalted position, one of them being the owner of Computer Plus, who did not take kindly to being defamed by Mr. Blumenthal and so sued him. The case was strong enough to have persuaded a jury of Mr. Blumenthal’s peers that he had wronged the lady, and the jury award was an attempt by ordinary citizens to make her whole, $18.3 being the value of the business destroyed by Mr. Blumenthal.

The lede for the story in CTMirror ran as follows:

“The Connecticut Supreme Court Monday [8/26/13] dismissed a small company's $18.3 million defamation claim against the state that became an issue in the U.S Senate campaign of Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in 2010.”

Connecticut’s Supreme Court, we are told, “offered no opinion on the substance of the claims and counter-claims” decided by the jury. The high court instead “focused on the narrow question of whether the state, by suing the company for civil damages, had waived the immunity against civil lawsuits generally enjoyed by public officials and state agencies… In a unanimous opinion by Justice Flemming L. Norcott Jr., the state's highest court concluded that sovereign immunity protected the state in the case. It set aside the reduced $1.83 million damage award, and dismissed all claims by Computers Plus.”

In its decision, the high court ruled that a private person unjustly deprived of property by the state must, before filing a suit, obtain from the state’s Office of the Claims Commissioner an approval to sue; the decision of the claims commissioner may then be appealed to the General Assembly. This process, which places decisions properly made by the judicial department directly in the hands of the legislature, is itself constitutionally questionable.  One purpose of the litigatory merry go round is to frustrate aggrieved citizens from seeking redress directly from the judicial department. The high court ruling permitted the justices to over-leap the findings issued by the lower courts.  

Case closed, next…

For some who have paid attention to high court decisions in which the political status of prominent politicians lies in the justice pans, the decision of the court in this instance is not surprising. But what are the real world consequences that follow upon the servility of courts to the political establishment? The commissioner of the Office of the Claims Commissioner, an executive agency, is J. Paul Vance, son of Department Spokesman/Media Relations Commander at Connecticut’s State Police. Mr. Vance reports to Governor Dannel Malloy, the state’s chief executive.

At a minimum, the highly politicized decision, masquerading as a finding that turns on a process point, is a firm indication to citizens of Connecticut  who may in the future be harmed by high-handed suit-prone attorneys general that they cannot receive simple justice from the courts, because “the state” is encircled by a near absolute sovereign immunity so impenetrable to common sense and simple justice that it may only rarely be breeched -- not even by an aggrieved woman initially sued by the state upon whom once attorney general  and now U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal had waged, according to a jury verdict, an unjust war in the course of which her company had been litigated out of existence by Mr. Blumenthal.

Really, one wants to respond with pikestaffs and pitchforks to the high court’s decision. The owner of Computer Plus – as well as the owners of all small businesses in Connecticut – has been told by the Supreme Court that she has no direct recourse to the courts after the state first initiated a suit against her.

No, instead of applying to the courts for succor in response to a state initiated suit since determined by a jury to be ill advised, the aggrieved and damaged owner of Computer Plus must first apply to politicians, the initial cause of the misery and near poverty brought upon her by ambitious, publicity hungry politicians on the make.  

When apprised by an English court that the law supposed Mr. Bumble’s wife “operated under his direction,” Mr. Bumble, a character in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, erupted, “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass — a idiot.”

Under the new regimen imposed by the court, the state may invidiously sue a business; the owner of the business then must apply for judgment to an executive administrator who answers to the governor; should the owner wish to contest the judgment, he must apply to the General Assembly; and should the case proceed to trial, the state attorney general – the very agency that initiated the fraudulent suit – will prosecute the case in court.

The question before the general public is: How would the public know if its state were an idiot?

Conspiracy Theorists And Connecticut Lawmakers

The absence of authoritative reports and data is the breeding ground of conspiracy theorists. No conspiracy theorists so far – though it may be best to keep quiet about this; you never know – has alleged that those who believe the earth is round are engaged in a vast conspiracy to subtly undermine the truth, which is that the earth is flat, as everyone can well see. For the professional conspiracy theorist, there is no point in doubting received truths of long standing.

Everything else is fair game.

Some early reports on the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary school were, at best, dubious. Multiple reports – particularly stories indicating the police had handcuffed a mysterious man in the woods surrounding the school – gave rise to suspicions that a second shooter was involved in the mayhem. There was no second shooter… we think.

We non-conspiracy theorists don’t know there was no second shooter because everyone in Connecticut who is not Governor Dannel Malloy or quick on the trigger legislators in Connecticut’s General Assembly is awaiting a final, definitive report on the slaughter from relevant authorities before he is is able, in a non-conspiratorial theorist manner, to draw hard and fast conclusion concerning what did and did not happen on the day Adam Lanza killed his mother, accessed her weaponry and shot to death 20 children and 6 adults at the school.

A long rifle was left in the car Mr. Lanza had stolen from his mother. What was the weapon? Very early reports suggested it might have been a Bushmaster rifle; later reports indicated it was a shotgun owned by Mrs. Lanza. Still later reports suggested that Mr. Lanza shot his way into the school with the Bushmaster, carrying with him two revolvers, one of which he used to commit suicide. So said media reports, but it is important to remember that investigators on the scene have not issued any official report. Police spokesman Lieutenant Paul Vance has, it is true, given numerous media opportunities in the course of which he has released minimal information that would not compromise what he has called “an ongoing criminal investigation.”

That expression is used most often in prosecutable cases; no one wants to weaken the prosecution of alleged criminals. In the Sandy Hook case, Mr. Lanza cannot be prosecuted, because he is dead, having committed suicide after his appalling slaughter of school children and their wards.

The weapon left in the car, unidentified in early reports, gave rise to the supposition that Mr. Lanza had left the Bushmaster rifle in his mother’s stolen car. Unsupported factoids such as these are meat and potatoes to conspiracy theorists. But it is important to understand that such data is unsupported because relevant authorities – for whatever reason, good or bad –have chosen neither to affirm nor deny in a timely fashion the facts of the case in their possession.

The governor, as well as other politicians, has said many times that he and the General Assembly must produce legislation that would prevent future crimes of the sort committed by Mr. Lanza in Sandy Hook. In a media release given out two days after President Barrack Obama had addressed the nation on his proposals to mitigate gun violence, Mr. Malloy said,“In the hours after the worst of our fears were confirmed, in the midst of the grief and sorrow over the loss of 20 innocent children and six dedicated educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School, there was one question on the minds of people across Connecticut and around the nation: How do we make sure this never happens again?”

Surely, one way to make sure Sandy Hook-like assaults on school children here and across the nation “never happen again” is to await definitive reports, eschew hazy suppositions of a kind made by conspiracy theorists on both sides of the National Rifle Association (NRA) barricades, and produce effective legislation that will answer the principal question on the minds of people across Connecticut and around the nation: How do we make sure this never happens again?

Unfortunately --fortunately for conspiracy theorists -- even the final report is not likely to be definitive. Mr. Malloy has spurned any further updates from the Connecticut State Police, but Lieutenant Paul Vance traveled to Newtown in the last few days to update the parents of those slain by Mr. Lanza, some of whom wanted information concerning Mr. Lanza’s medical records.

Mr. Vance told the parents that he was prevented by law from releasing information concerning Mr. Lanza’s mental state: “A medical history doesn't die with an individual. It's our responsibility to abide by state law even when conducting an investigation."

To quote Mr. Mr. Bumble in Dickenson’s Oliver Twist, “If the law supposes that, the law is a (sic) ass — a idiot. If that's the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience -- by experience.”

Mr. Obama, Mr. Malloy and his friends in Connecticut’s Democratic dominated General Assembly, the architects and guardians of state law, may be of some help here: Change the law -- right now.

All medical information that is part of a formal police investigation should be released in final reports – especially in this case in which a mental disorder may be a cause of the crime and legislation affecting mental health bills are awaiting a final report. It is not clear at this point whether leading legislators realize that a law they've written makes it unlikely that they will receive timely information that should shape current legislation.

If legislators in writing their laws have blinded themselves to the truth, we can only wish upon them a few million conspiracy theorists to spur them in the right direction.