Corruption in Corrupticut

Not all corruption is equal.

In a recent column, “A Kennedy Stirs Connecticut's Politics,” Kevin Rennie sideswiped departing Republican leader Larry Cafero, who is to the Republican Party what Rocky Marciano was to boxing, a hard slugger:

“Cafero got snagged in a 2012 federal investigation into campaign contributions and legislation. He was caught on video as an informant deposited $5,000 in cash into a refrigerator in Cafero's office. The money was converted into campaign contributions from straw donors, and the scheme was revealed last year during the criminal trial of a campaign aide to former Speaker of the House Christopher Donovan.

“What a mess Cafero leaves in his wake. His gelatinous, silent deputies, Reps. Themis Klarides and Vincent Candelora, have disgraced themselves beyond repair for failing to take a stand for honor during this long fiasco. They will wear Cafero's deep stains for however long they remain in public life.”

And the sins of the political father shall be visited upon the heads of his political children – yea, even to the tenth generation: “… gelatinous, silent deputies… have disgraced themselves beyond repair… They will wear Cafero’s deep stains for however long they remain in public life.”

And the stain that has dishonored Cafero and his gelatinous deputies is … what exactly?

An “informant,” Ray Soucy, tapped by the FBI as a singing canary, deposited an envelope containing $5,000 in cash “into a refrigerator in Cafero’s office.” Apparently – though we may never know for certain – Mr. Soucy was given the cash by the FBI and told – though we may never know for certain – to make use of it to incriminate Mr. Cafero. Mr. Soucy had earlier used money provided to him to incriminate several associates of then Speaker of the House Chris Donovan. The net cast over the troubled waters by the FBI snagged a few Donovan operatives, but the big fish, Mr. Donovan, got away. Mr. Donovan’s campaign for the 5^th District seat in the U.S. House collapsed in ruins under the hammer blows of the FBI investigation.

The attempt to ensnare Mr. Cafero failed when the Republican leader in the General Assembly noticed Mr. Soucy stuffing the cash in the refrigerator and rejected the FBI bagman’s fraudulent cash donation.

Speculation may and usually does run wild at this point. Did Mr. Cafero know when the cash was being stuffed in the fridge that Mr. Soucy was an FBI plant? Probably not, because following Refrigeratorgate, Mr. Cafero did accept from Mr. Soucy tainted donations in the form of checks that he apparently did not know were tainted. The FBI later would advise Mr. Cafero he was not a target of their investigation. Mr. Soucy, the FBI plant, was successful in delivering tainted campaign funds to several of Mr. Donovan’s associates, some of whom were convicted and sentenced to prison. But Mr. Donovan, his campaign for the U.S. House in tatters, escaped the prison noose. The play of events suggests – though, of course, we may never know for certain – that the sting operation, at some point, may have been compromised. In any case, the Big Fishes wriggled free, and the FBI was satisfied with smaller fry. None of Mr. Cafero’s gelatinous associates were arrested, very possibly because neither Reps. Themis Klarides nor Vincent Candelora had accepted tainted campaign donations.

Never-the-less, the two targets of Mr. Rennie’s outrage, Ms. Klarides and Mr. Candelora, are not merely gelatinous; they “have disgraced themselves beyond repair; they are dishonorable; they will “wear Cafero's deep stains for however long they remain in public life.”

So says Connecticut’s equivalent of Nathanial Hawthorne’s the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne’s godly pastor in the Scarlet Letter. The Reverend Dimmesdale was a secret sinner always in good odor with his flock:

'People say,' said another, 'that, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to his heart that such a scandal has come upon his congregation."

In any partisan commentary that has pretentions to non-partisanship, fairness equates to equal flailing. If you whip a Republican who richly deserves the whipping – say, a felonious governor – you must find a Democrat to whip, so that the pans of your justice scale will be evenly balanced. If you whip a Democratic Speaker of the House, you must find on the Republican side someone equally odious you must flail. And the weight of the accusation must appear to be equivalent – even when the justice pans bear different weights.

There is no indication – NONE – that Ms. Klarides deserves the letter “A” Mr. Rennie has pinned upon her. Mr. Cafero’s honor was not damaged by an FBI canary whose cash campaign contribution he rejected, as politely as possible. The sting operation is as old as Adam and Eve: The serpent in the garden is God’s advocate sent upon the earth, like the FBI, to seek the ruin of men’s souls. Sometimes the satanic advocate, the tester of men, succeeds, sometimes not.

Both Mr. Donovan and Mr. Cafero rejected the overtures of the FBI’s satanic advocate, Mr. Soucy, once a union leader in Connecticut’s prison system. Because Mr. Soucy  had co-operated with the FBI, he avoided jail time. Donovangate should put Mr.  Rennie in mind of a remark made by Bill Buckley following a failed 1957 coup plot against Indonesian strongman Sukarno: "The attempted assassination of Sukarno last week,” Mr. Buckley wrote in National Review, “had all the earmarks of a CIA operation. Everyone in the room was killed except Sukarno."

Measured by the number of top dogs upon whom the shadow of the prison fell, the Donovan sting operation was far from successful. Perhaps Mr. Rennie will devote one of his columns to explaining why and then demand that the General Assembly create an Inspector General Office to examine and prosecute future cases of corruption in Connecticut, the state that regulates everything but itself.

Soucy, Plunkitt And The Dovonan Sting Operation

The FBI’s singing canary in the Donovan probe, “labor activist” Ray Soucy, was not given prison time for the part he had played in the attempted corruption of former Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan.

The lede on a story in a Hartford paper ran as follows:

“A labor activist at the center of an attempt two years ago to kill a tax on tobacco by bribing a top state lawmaker with tens of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign money was sentenced Monday to three years probation, the first six months to be served at a halfway house.”

Connecticut’s majority Democratic Party is full of “labor activists.” It’s only a slight stretch to say Governor Dannel Malloy, who has marched on the picket line with union workers, is himself a “labor activist.” Mr. Malloy pledged his troth to unions when he was in the political nursery, and he has renewed his vows several times during his administration, most notably when his first budget was on the drawing boards.

However, few labor activists are as colorful as Mr. Soucy, Connecticut’s equivalent of George Washington Plunkitt, a Tammany Hall boss in New York City who ran his political operation from a bootblack stand. Mr. Plunkitt – “I seen my opportunities, and I took’em”  – was on his way out even before he was interviewed several times by reporter William Riordan, who later stitched together his embarrassingly frank interviews in a small book, “Plunkitt of Tammany Hall.”  Mr. Plunkitt claimed he was a casualty of the then new civil service system, the bane and ruination of political parties. Mr. Plunkitt’s Democratic Party, it may be noticed, has since adapted to the new reality and now counts unions and civil service workers as the I-joist of the Democratic Party.

The FBI wired Mr.  Soucy and provided him with a script with which he might ensnare the people – some young, others inexperienced in the ways of political lifers -- who surrounded Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan, then running for a U.S. Congressional seat left vacant by Chris Murphy, now a U.S. Senator.  The rancid odor issuing from the FBI sting operation persuaded Mr. Donovan to withdraw his Congressional bid in favor of Democrat Elizabeth Esty. The small-fry were easily ensnared. At some point during the FBI sting operation, the cover was blown – when and by whom we may never know – and most of the incumbent big fish, with some effort, swam upstream.

Hauling in the net, the Feds successfully prosecuted Mr. Donovan’s campaign manager, lower level campaign workers, and some benighted smoke shop owners drawn into the sting by George Washington Plunkitt Soucy, who teased fraudulent campaign donations from them by explaining that money made the wheels go round at the state Capitol. Or, as Mr. Soucy colorfully put it, “Politics is about the Benjamins. [Ben Franklin’s mug is on the highly inflated hundred dollar bill] This game runs on one thing -- dollars."

Other Soucyisms:

 "Chris Murphy will do anything in the (expletive deleted) world for me because he remembers that I was the first one to believe in and invest in him. That's how the system works."

After Mr. Soucy tells a wired FBI informant, Patrick Castagna, that he has been sowing the political ground in $10,000 increments, Mr. Castagna, the FBI straight man, doubts whether $10,000 is sufficient to buy a Connecticut politician. Inflation, after all, has taken a bite out of the purchasing power of the dollar.

Says Soucy, “The $10,000 was to let him know you are serious....We're dealing with politicians. We're not dealing with the mob [pause]. It's a close second."

“Pictures [the Benjamins again] they're worth a thousand words. The guy running in the 5th District [former House Speaker Chris Donovan] he got 10 pictures [a $10,000 campaign contribution].”

When all the dirt was flushed down the drain, “the guy running in the 5^th District” gave up his campaign, and the FBI, thanks to the wired Soucy, managed to send a few Donovan subalterns to prison. But not Soucy the singing canary. The well connected union leader, now on probation, will spend six months in a half-way house because, according to one report,
“Soucy [sic] recordings and his help in raising and delivering about $28,000 in cash were instrumental in the indictments of two Donovan campaign officers and five roll-your-own owners or employees.”

The guys who got the Benjamins were inconvenienced but emerged unscathed from the FBI sting.

Mr. Plunkitt tells us why:

“Understand, I ain’t defendin‘ politicians of today who steal. The politician who steals is worse than a thief. He is a fool. With the grand opportunities all around for the man with a political pull, there’s no excuse for stealin’ a cent. The point I want to make is that if there is some stealin‘ in politics, it don’t mean that the politicians of 1905 are, as a class, worse than them of 1835. It just means that the old-timers had nothin’ to steal, while the politicians now are surrounded by all kinds of temptations and some of them naturally—the fool ones—buck up against the penal code.”

Roll Your Own Taxpayer

The Chris Donovan, “Roll Your Own” scandal is being judicially tucked to bed now that some principals in the scandal have been sentenced.  Most recently, Joshua Nassi, former state House Speaker Chris Donovan’s campaign manager, was sentenced to 28 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton.

Mr. Donovan was running for the U.S. House in Connecticut’s 5^th District when his campaign was rudely interrupted by FBI wired singing canaries, prominent among them former corrections union official Ray Soucy, a character who might have done well for himself during the good old days of Tammany Hall and George Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany Hall boss who always was careful to make a sharp distinction between honest and dishonest graft.

Connecticut’s Roll Your Own tobacco shops seriously undermined the state’s effort to reduce smoking by making tobacco prohibitively expensive through punitive taxation. The Roll Your Own product could not have been punitively taxed unless the General Assembly designated such shops as “tobacco manufacturers.” Slapping that designation upon an operation in which cigarette purchasers used a machine to roll their own cigarettes was, as Mark Twain might have said, a bit of a stretcher.

Right from the start, however, the political stars were aligned against the Roll Your Own Tobacco shops, which were springing up like poisoned mushrooms all over the state. And, unforgivably, these mushrooms were not subject to the same exorbitant tax levied on Big Tobacco.

While the tobacco tax is the state’s most egregious example of punitive taxation, Connecticut’s tax on gasoline – the environmentally bad stuff people put in their cars so they might get to work and pay more taxes – is the highest in the nation. The gas tax is actually two taxes: a tax paid at the pump and a gross receipts tax, hidden from purchasers, levied when the product arrives in port, both of which were supposed to be sequestered in a special fund for road maintenance. The so called road maintenance tax has long since been dumped into the state’s General Fund. Some voices in the state’s Democratic dominated General Assembly lately have been raised to resurrect tolls to pay for much needed road and bridge maintenance.

Always starving for tax receipts to pay for a budget that has increased threefold since former Governor Lowell Weicker and Democrats in the General Assembly imposed an income tax on the state, a bill was put forward in the General Assembly to designate Roll Your Own tobacco shops as “tobacco manufacturers.” So designated, the Roll Your Own shops would be subject to the same exorbitant and punitive taxes levied on Big Tobacco. This is the bill that became the snare that caught Mr. Nassi and others in its iron and unforgiving jaws.

Punitive taxes are always imposed under a flag of concern and compassion. Smoking is bad for your health, and it increases the cost of health care. Why should people who are not addicted to smoking pay higher insurance premiums because smokers choose to pollute their lungs? Who would mind paying exorbitant taxes on gasoline, if they could be certain the taxes would be dedicated to road and bridge repairs? Cars that do not depend on gasoline are more environmentally friendly, and high gasoline taxes are a way of driving up the cost of gas guzzling cars so that future purchasers would be more inclined to “invest in” more environmentally friendly modes of transportation. Better still, these tax dollars can be used to make necessary “investments” in public transportation such as the New Britain to Hartford fast-track bus line.

Such is the irresistible zeitgeist in Connecticut: What fool could possibly object to high taxes if it can be shown that the taxes are used for benevolent purposes by a prudent and compassionate state? Taxpayers in Connecticut should know their public officials will use such punishing taxes wisely. The benefits of high taxes far outweigh the disadvantages of high taxes. Any idiot can see that. And any idiot can see that low tax Roll Your Own smoke shops kicked against the pricks

What? A low tax tobacco product in Connecticut?  You gotta be kidding me. Why, everyone knows that low tax products drive from the market high tax products. And they rob tax resources from a benevolent Peter who is robbing taxpayers to pay Paul. Why, dear me, think of the collapse of benevolence that would occur if state government were deprived of tax resources.  Just to begin with, Governor Dannel Malloy would not be able to supply dwindling tax resources to multimillion dollar Connecticut based companies in order to bribe the companies to remain in Connecticut and refrain from moving operations to low tax, low regulatory states. In a low tax, low regulatory environment, tax consumers would have to do more with less. Where would we be then?

Low tax Roll Your Own smoke shops fell to this remorseless logic. They were doomed from the beginning. It only took a slight nudge and a little canary-wiring from the FBI to topple them over the edge.   

Connecticut, the Canary in the National Mineshaft

Such are the parallels between the Malloy and Obama administrationsthat it might almost be said President Barack Obama is now replicating on a national scale The Malloy Way, with one important exception.

When Governor Dannel Malloy first came into office, Connecticut was facing a daunting deficit of about $3 billion in a biennial budget of about $20 billion. Hoisting the flag of “shared sacrifice,” Mr. Malloy raised taxes, imposing on Connecticut the largest tax increase in state history. Mr. Obama’s most recent gambit is to raise taxes immediately on the country’s malefactors of great wealth in a special session of the congress, saving until tomorrow – “which creeps in this petty pace to the last annals of recorded time” -- any strategy to reduce spending.

A newly elected Governor Malloy departed sharply from ardent progressives in his party who insisted that the bulk of the tax increases should come mostly from the state’s millionaires; instead of acceding to what budget watchers in Connecticut might call the Donovan plan, Malloy increased tax revenue from enterprises that previously has escaped the tax man. The Malloy tax was broad based, not narrowly contrived.

Mr. Donovan, the Speaker of the House, later ran for the U.S. House of Representatives and was chosen by the Democratic Party as its nominee for the 5^th District. Mr. Donovan’s campaign was driven into the ground by an FBI investigation in the course of which his campaign finance manager and others were arrested. Had Mr. Donovan prevailed in a general election against Republican nominee Andrew Roraback, the Speaker would have entered the U.S. Congress just in time to vote affirmatively for national tax increases on millionaires. He missed the joyous moment by a hair.

We see here a notable difference between Mr. Obama, a perpetual campaigner, and Malloy, a perpetual campaigner. Obama’s tax on millionaires – actually, quarter-millionaires – is little more than a campaign device; the millionaire tax, which will become operative if previous across-the-board Bush tax cuts are adjusted to eliminate tax cuts on quarter-millionaires, will not generate enough revenue to pay for Obama’s new programs, unless it is broadened over time to include a revocation of middle class tax cuts.

But in other respects, Mr. Obama and Mr. Malloy have adopted similar political strategies in addressing deficits.

Mr. Malloy is now facing yet another deficit following his gargantuan tax increase, and the choices available to him to discharge the “shortfall” of his first budget and the coming deficit of his second budget – about $2 billion– are limited, because salary and benefit increases for unionized state workers in future years had been written into previous binding contracts he negotiated with state unions. Mr. Malloy then cannot expect savings from that quarter.

In addition, Mr. Malloy has vowed not to raise taxes to fill what he calls a “shortfall” of about $395 million in his last budget. And as soon as he turns the corner, following an upcoming special session on the“shortfall” in his current budget, Mr. Malloy will find himself face to face with a far larger deficit in the new budget season.

These deficits, the governor and other leading Democrats insist, have been caused by the national recession, the growth of Medicaid spending, the European double-dip recession – all of which, it should be noted, are beyond the reach of solutions that might be adopted by state government, which is a rather complex way of rhetorically disowning responsibility for the deficit. Mr. Obama is masterfully adept at escaping the predictable consequences of his policy victories.

There is no George Bush in Connecticut to serve as an convenient scapegoat but, in the absence of a Republican who may usefully be vilified, a host of sub-demons -- the national recession, the international double-dip recession, which has hit France in the breadbasket, and other convenient agents of Connecticut’s destruction -- will do just as well.

It falls to men and women of good intent to point out that because deficits are caused primarily by exuberant spending, the only curative solution to repetitive deficits is spending reform -- not just temporary cuts in spending, but rather a vigorous effort to identify and remove what one might justly call the many drivers of spending escalation in Connecticut.

Here we tread dangerously on the electrically infused third rail of Connecticut politics. A real constitutional cap on spending tied to increases in the state domestic product or an end to binding arbitration just might reduce the rate of spending increase in annual budgets, about 7 percent per year since the Weicker income tax was levied in 1991. Putting in mothballs chronically failing public schools and replacing entire administrations and teachers with more competent and energized staffs, would reduce labor expenses and provide an incalculable educational benefit. A recent 2011 proficiency study shows that magnet schools in Hartford vastly outperform Hartford public schools: “The gap in 2011 between magnet school performance and neighborhood school performance stands at 26.2 points at Proficient, having widened by just over 7 points in the past four years.”

Solutions that will reposition Connecticut as an economic and educational powerhouse relative to other states – including business tax reductions and regulatory reform – are at hand. It is the courage of useful convictions that is wanting.

Democrats Call for Unity

Speaker of the state House Chris Donovan should have received by Monday a call from John Olsen, President of the AFL-CIO, beseeching the Democratic nominee for the U.S. House in the 5^th District to withdraw from the race.

Not a few members of Mr. Donovan’s campaign staff have been arrested by the FBI; other of Mr. Donovan’s political associates are even now being wrestled to the ground by FBI agents and prosecutors intent on uncovering what they know and when they knew it about  fraudulent campaign contributions.

Esty, Roraback, Donovan and the Correlation of Forces

The question before the house now that Speaker of the state House Chris Donovan has been bested in a Democratic primary by former state Representative Elizabeth Esty is: Will Mr. Donovan join a majority of Democrats in Connecticut and support the people’s choice for the U.S. Congress in the 5^th District? Mr. Donovan was defeated in the recently concluded Democratic primary by a large margin: Esty's final vote total was 12,678 to Donovan's 9,212 and Roberti's 6,583.

Crony Capitalist Democrats

It began as a “First Five” program and then, as happens with the usual governmental fix, quickly expanded, while retaining in its name the modest number “Five.”

The day after Democratic voters in Connecticut went to the primary polls and chose Elizabeth Esty over Chris Dovovan in the 5^th District campaign for the U.S. Senate, Mr. Donovan having caught his foot in an FBI snare, Governor Dannel Malloy announced he had given to Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, a $25 million ten-year forgivable loan at 1 percent, a $5 million job training grant, a grant up to $5 million for the building's alternative energy systems and up to $80 million in urban and industrial reinvestment tax credits.

Bridgewater is the eighth recipient of state largess in Mr. Malloy’s “Next Five” program; the name of the program, open ended to any business chosen by the governor as a fitting recipient of taxpayer dollars, has been changed to comport with reality, the “Next” suggesting that there will be no terminus beyond “Five.” It does not take long for new governors to become conversant in Orwellian Newspeak.

The reality is: The state of Connecticut is now in the corporate bribing business.

The seven companies that so far have joined the former “First Five” program are: Cigna in Bloomfield, ESPN in Bristol, NBC Sports in Stamford, Alexion Pharmaceuticals in New Haven, CareCentrix in Hartford, Sustainable Building Solutions in North Haven and, most recently, Deloitte in Stamford.

As befits the largest hedge fund in the world, the CEO of Bridgewater, founder and chief investment officer Ray Dalio, is the highest paid hedge fund manager in the world at $3.9 billion per annum. Mr. Dalio will be moving his company from Westport, Connecticut to Stamford, Connecticut. “First Five” originally was intended to lure out of state businesses into Connecticut.

If Occupy Wall Street were still in business, tents would be sprouting somewhere near Stamford's Harbor Point development where, according to co-CEO of Bridgewater Greg Jensen, the company intends to construct a 750,000-square-foot of space in two buildings on a forested campus. Mr. Jensen’s yearly salary was not mentioned in news reports touting Mr. Malloy’s big catch, but it’s probably up there in the stratosphere of other one percenters who’s fannies have been spanked by Occupiers and their sympathizers in Connecticut’s General Assembly, Speaker of the House Chris Donovan among them. Mr. Donovan’s jihad against under taxed hedge fund operators is legendary.

The Occupiers might have had a sympathetic U.S. Representative in Mr. Dovovan had the FBI not rooted up some corruption truffles in his campaign. Last Tuesday Mr. Donovan was womped by Elizabeth Esty, wife of Mr. Malloy’s Commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) Daniel Esty. Mrs. Esty is believed to be a moderate Democrat. She will be facing moderate Republican State Senator Andrew Roraback in the general election.

The original progressives, like their modern counterparts, looked upon big business with a baleful eye; Teddy Roosevelt played a prominent role in the election of 1912 by vowing to break up the Big Trusts whose path to power in the economy ran through Washington D.C. and state houses.

Oddly, in the modern period, trust busters tend to be conservative Republicans, who are convinced that too-large-to-fail businesses should not be artificially propped up by Washington and state house crony capitalists. In the progress of progressivism from 1912 to 2012, the impulse to level the economic playing field by removing governmental preferments showered upon large businesses by incumbent politicians thirsty for campaign contributions gravitated from progressive Democrats to anti-crony capitalist conservatives.

The architecture of Mr. Malloy’s “Next Five” program virtually assures that capital investment cash provided by taxpayers will flow to mega-businesses such as Bridgewater, thus giving too-large-to-fail corporations a leg up over their smaller competitors, who are left to struggle in the usual Darwinian economic universe that rewards free enterprisers who have earned their own success without battening on the teat of Trust enablers.

Here is a difference between the two parties that Roraback the Moderate Republican might well stress in his campaign against Mrs. Esty, doomed by her association with the Malloy administration to support the transference of tax dollars from Social Security recipients to Mr. Dalio’s gold lined pockets.

The best, most efficient and least corrupt way to spur business activity in Connecticut is to reduce business taxes – for all businesses, not for those relatively prosperous select few whose tin cups are filled by phony progressive crony capitalist governors. Now that Mr. Donovan has been sidelined by an FBI sucker punch, real 1912 progressives in the state could use an honest political broker.

Jordan Outed, McKinney Calls for Legislative Investigation

Citing “sources close to the investigation” of Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan’s 5^th District campaign for the U.S. Senate, HartfordCourant investigative reporter Jon Lender fingered Laura Jordon as the“campaign aide who gave inside information to then Donovan campaign manager Joshua Nassi.

Prior to Ms. Jordon’s outing as the Donovan floor manager identified in an affidavit supporting the arrest of Mr. Nassi, the elusive legislative contact had been identified in prosecution records as “Legislative Aide 1”:

“Top Democratic legislative leaders would not agree to a Republican lawmaker’s proposal earlier this week to launch their own probe into possible wrongdoing in the General Assembly, including the House speaker’s office. And up to now, Legislative Aide 1 — as the person is referred to in the indictment — has not been identified publicly.

“But in recent days, sources familiar with the events described in the indictment have confirmed to The Courant that she is Laura Jordan, a top aide and lawyer who is paid $150,000 a year in the House speaker’s office at the Capitol. Jordan’s attorney, Thomas Murphy, would neither confirm nor deny Friday that his client is Legislative Aide 1.”

Malloy the Progressive

According to Public Policy Polling, Governor Dannel Malloy “continues to be one of the most unpopular Governors in the country in our polling.”

Mr. Malloy’s approval-disapproval spread likely astonished most political actors in the state, with the possible exception of the phlegmatic Roy Occhiogrosso, the governor chief flack catcher, whose response to a reputable, non-partisan poll showing the governor with an approval rating of a slender 33 percent and a disapproval rating of 51 percent was a barely suppressed yawn.

“We generally don’t comment on polls,” said Mr. Occhiogrosso, “because what’s there to say? Polls come and go, numbers go up and down. The governor always tries to do what he thinks is in the best interests of the people of Connecticut, irrespective of the political consequences.”

Politicians also come and go, and their comings and goings are sometimes intimately connected with sliding approval ratings.

On previous occasions, Mr. Malloy has said that he is uninterested in popularity contests. His principle business lies in re-inventing Connecticut; in this ambition, he has patterned his political program after that of President Barack Obama, who has been during his first term in office busily re-inventing America.

Actually, it may be the other way around. It is always difficult in these circumstances to determine precisely which came first, the chicken or the egg. In his second campaign for the presidency, Mr. Obama – slipping in the polls, but not quite as precipitously as Mr. Malloy – has begun to chatter about millionaires paying their “fair share”; in Mr. Obama’s view, a millionaire is anyone who earns by the sweat of his brow more than $250,000 per year, well short of a million. With the Damoclean sword of a $15 trillion deficit hanging over their heads, most non-millionaire taxpayers in the country are beginning to brace themselves for a massive tax increase.  Mr. Malloy, it will be recalled, is the father of the largest tax increase in Connecticut history, compared to which his spending cuts have been indeterminate and modest.

The similarities between Mr. Obama and Mr. Malloy are telling. Both are young, and it is said that Mr. Obama has some Irish blood rolling his veins.

Both are ardent travelers. According to a recent story, Mr. Malloy will be on his way to China sometime in September, there to explore the possibility of persuading his equivalent in China’s fascist government to invest in Connecticut. The Chinese already are heavily invested in the foundering U.S. economy. Mr. Malloy possibly has more miles on his pedometer than any other Connecticut governor and has shown himself to be – the views of Jonathan Pelto notwithstanding – a faithful progressive.         

Support for unions was one of the identifying characteristics of the 1912 presidential campaign involving trust buster and former Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, a convert to progressive causes, Republican President Howard Taft, a golfer whose real political ambitions would later be fulfilled when he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Democratic candidate and dilettante progressive Woodrow Wilson, and socialist candidate Eugene Debs, the real progressive deal. In the coming 2012 election, the United States will be reprising its 1912 counterpart, which some political scientists consider one of the most defining elections in U.S. History. The 1912 election, in which progressivism made its first and most lasting impression on American politics, introduced into the political mainstream the central tenants of a progressive program that reached its zenith during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt.

Mr. Roosevelt favored the unionization of private industry but drew a line in the sand concerning the unionization of government workers. Willing to help union workers obtain more of the profits they helped generate in the private sector, Mr. Roosevelt said “It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government,” because government workers do not generate profits; they negotiate for more tax money. A union strike against taxpayers, Mr. Roosevelt said, would be “unthinkable and intolerable.”

In Connecticut, government workers have become the pampered pets of politicians like Mr. Malloy and Speaker of the State House of Representatives Chris Dovovan, both of whom were quite willing to exclude from budget deliberations Republican leaders who had not yet bowed their necks to union demands. Indeed, the Democratic dominated General Assembly pre-approved a budget that later was substantially changed by Mr. Malloy negotiating in concert with the very same union bargainers Mr. Roosevelt thought should never have a claim on public money.

Ah well, it is the nature of progressivism to progress. Accordingly, Connecticut has witnessed in recent days it’s governor andattorney general marching in a picket line in support of union workers against nursing home administrators, sounding for all the world like Mr. Debs accusing greedy administrators of the Pullman Company of buying the favors of politicians. Not one commentator has yet accused SEBAC of purchasing the favors of Mr. Malloy and Attorney General George Jepsen through donations and in-kind contributions to their campaigns, the nightmare that haunted Mr. Roosevelt’s otherwise placid nights.      

The Silence of the Lambs

Speaker of the state House or Representatives Chris Donovan is the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut 5^th District. His former campaign finance director Robert Braddock has been arrested following a Grand Jury indictment on a series of charges involving campaign finance money laundering.

During an arraignment proceeding on Thursday in federal court in New Haven, charges were brought against other people involved with Mr. Donovan’s U.S. Senate campaign, among them former Donovan campaign manager Joshua Nassi,  Paul Rogers, affiliated with two roll-your-own tobacco shops in Waterbury, and union officials associated with the Department of Corrections.

Mr. Donovan appears to be weathering this brutal prosecutorial storm with a degree of calm indifference that has astonished some reporters and commentators familiar with other political corruption cases in Connecticut.

Leaders in the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Bailey, beginning with Governor Dannel Malloy, the titular head of the state Democratic Party, and including Mr. Donovan’s associates in the General Assembly, so far have not been sufficiently stirred to appoint an informal delegation of Democrat Party grown-ups to pay a visit to Mr. Donovan and suggest strongly that he withdraw from his race for the sake of his party.

Even within the Democratic Party, some are wondering -- why not?

There are two separate questions: 1) Was Mr. Donovan involved in campaign money laundering? Answer: We don’t know, yet. And 2) Should a politician whose campaign finance director – and now others -- arrested for campaign financing illegalities be running for the U.S. Congress?

Somewhat like God, the FBI doesn’t play dice with the universe; once they start a prosecution, it’s a pretty safe bet they’ve got the goods or will get them by squeezing all the singing canaries that come their way.

According to an FBI media release, birds in the cage now include Benjamin Hogan, a.k.a. “Benny,” 33, of Southington, an employee of Smoke House Tobacco, a Roll Your Own smoke shop with two locations in Waterbury; David Moffa, a.k.a. “Moff” and “Buffalo,” 52, of Middlebury, the former president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Local 387, representing employees of the Connecticut Department of Correction; Daniel Monteiro, 33, of Wolcott, an owner of a company located in Waterbury; Joshua Nassi, 34, of Fairfield [the former campaign manager for Mr. Donovan’s congressional campaign];  Paul Rodgers, a.k.a. “Paulie,” 39, of Watertown, a co-owner of Smoke House Tobacco, and George Tirado , 35, of Waterbury, a co-owner of Smoke House Tobacco.

So far, eight people have been charged in the case, but the FBI’s prize specimen may be Ray Soucy, a former state corrections employee and Treasurer of AFSCME, Local 387.

On July 24, Mr. Soucy pleaded guilty on one count of concocting a scheme to bribe a public official, one count of conspiring to make false statements to the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) and one count of impeding the FEC’s enforcement of federal campaign finance laws.

While Mr. Donovan is not named in the FBI indictment, a conversation cited in the document between Mr. Soucy and Josh Nassi, Mr. Donovan’s former campaign manager, strongly suggests the Speaker may have been in the loop.

When Mr. Souci asks Mr. Nassi if the candidate (Mr. Donovan) was “good with this,” Mr. Nassi replies, “Yeah. I’m, you know, doing everything I can … you gotta just monitor this s**t all the time.”

That answer would seem to imply that Mr. Donovan approved a scheme to ferry illegal contributions into his campaign by means of proxy contributors. It is difficult to put any other construction on this telling conversation.  In addition, Mr. Soucy may have been wired when he spoke to Mr. Nassi and others, in which case the FBI may have in its custody other incriminating conversation not noted in its indictment.

Confronted several times by reporters in the course of his now underfunded congressional campaign, Mr. Donovan has refused on the advice of his council to discuss matters relating to the FBI’s investigation and prosecution of his former employees.

Possibly, the grown-ups in the Democratic Party do not yet feel that push has come to shove. If so, they are poor readers of the times.

Fishwrap For July

Salon Weighs in on Connecticut’s U.S. Senatorial Race

Alex Pareene, who writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt [Romney]," has weighed in on the Chris Shays-Linda McMahon Republican primary contest for the U.S. Senate in an article titled “Chris Shays has no respect for Linda McMahon: The last Yankee Republican shares his honest opinion of his primary opponent.”

Mr. Pareene, formerly of Gawker, is likely not from the nutmeg state, but this is no impediment to Mr. Pareene, who writes:

"Shays is pro-choice, pro-gun control, an environmentalist, pro-gay rights, pro-campaign finance reform — basically your classic New England Yankee Republican. Or as we call them now, 'Democrats.”'This helps to explain why he’s having so much trouble defeating someone as ridiculous as Linda McMahon, whose sole asset as a politician is her great wealth, which she earned off the labor of poorly treated 'independent contractor' wrestlers who were not even offered health insurance as they destroyed their bodies with drugs in other to retain their dangerous jobs with her company, World Wrestling Entertainment. She is a rich ‘outsider’ who repeats dumb Tea Party lines about the Fed and the deficit, and he is a “career politician” who represents a long-dead faction of the Republican Party.”

Sam Gejdenson Finds Death Of Cuban Dissident Suspicious

Mr. Gejdenson, the first child of Holocaust survivors elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, was for 19 years the U.S. Representative for the 2nd Congressional District of Connecticut. He was preceded in office by Former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, now a Hollywood mogul, and succeeded by former U.S. Representative Rob Simmons, who in turn was displaced by current U.S. Rep Joe Courtney.

According to CTMirror:

“Cuban authorities Monday said Payá and fellow activist Harold Cepero Escalante died in a one-car crash in eastern Cuba. A Spaniard and a Swede who were also riding in the car survived but were injured.

“Gejdenson called the accident ‘a suspicious turn of events,’ but said he had no proof of wrongdoing.

“In a statement, the White House Monday called Payá ‘a tireless champion for greater civic and human rights in Cuba.’

"’He remained optimistic until the end that the country he loved would see a peaceful and democratic transition,’ the statement said.”

Communist dictator of Cuba Fidel Castro and his brother Raoul have in the past been adept at concealing proofs of all sorts, but killing dissidents never has dimmed the ardor of businesses in the United States and elsewhere who hope to ply their trade in Cuba, despite the Castros’ penchant for nationalizing corporations and dispersing the proceeds by giving them to Cubans made poor by applied Marxist-Leninism.
Mr. Gejdenson, now involved in international trade with his own company, Sam Gejdenson International (SGI) – not yet nationalized by the Obama administration -- resides in Branford and presumably is still a Democrat.

Multiple Murderer Awarded Prestigious Grant

WNEW News reports that Batman Holmes, the orange headed mass murderer was awarded a prestigious grant from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

“James Holmes, the alleged gunman in the recent theater shooting that left 12 dead in Aurora, Colo., was previously awarded a $26,000 federal grant.”

U.N. Let’s Legalize Prostitution

Please don’t tell U.S. Health and Human Services Commissioner Kathleen Sebelius that the New York institution Charles Krauthammer described as a “sandbox of tyrants” would like, with or without your input, to legalize prostitution – in a good cause, of course.

The report--“HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights &Health”--cites a recommendation by the International Labour Organization, which recommends that “sex work” should be recognized as an occupation in order to be regulated “in a way that protects workers and customers.”

What Middle?

Depending upon which audience he happens to be addressing –business groups, unions -- U.S. Representative Chris Murphy of Connecticut’s 5^thDistrict puts on one of two faces, one appealing to the left and another to the right.

Some in Connecticut’s media are beginning to catch on to the trick, among them Chris Keating of the Hartford Courant, who reports on Mr. Murphy’s efforts to claim middle position in politics by reason of his membership in something called The Center Aisle Caucus.

Deputy Editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report Nathan L. Gonzales, Mr. Keating notes, “said the caucus is more of a social group than one that gets involved in the nitty gritty of writing complicated legislation on major issues.”

If Mr. Murphy were a moderate, it might not be a plus for him in any case because “’I don't know that voters reward moderation,’ Gonzales said. ‘If you're a member who talks with somebody from the other side of the aisle, you are immediately met with a primary challenge because you are viewed as compromising.’”

Mr. Murphy already is engaged in a primary battle with the redoubtable former Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, who has been attempting to convince progressives in Connecticut that Mr. Murphy is the plaything of Wall Street malefactors of great wealth, a slur Mr. Murphy quite properly resents.

Mr. Murphy is the plaything of arch progressives in his state.

Gone is the day when the middle in Connecticut politics mattered. What used to be called “the vital center” of Democratic politics in the state has moved very far to the left.

Following the election of Dannel Malloy as governor, all the firewalls have collapsed, and everyone knows it. In Mr. Malloy’s short time in office, Democrats have written a budget that many believe was never in balance. The budget battle, for the first time in living memory, was shaped without any Republican input, leading Republicans having been shooed out of the room while Dominant Democrats in the General assembly pre-approved a budget that was substantially changed after the governor’s confabulations with SEBAC, a coalition of unions authorized to bargain with the governor on state contracts. One witty commentator at the time– it might have been me – claimed that SEBAC had become in the course of the seemingly endless negotiations Connecticut’s fourth branch of government.

The union friendly budget, the largest tax increase in state history, the abolition of the death penalty, the candidacy of Speaker of the state House Chris Donovan as the Democratic Party’s choice for the U.S. Congress in the 5^thDistrict, the somnolent response of the governor upon learning that Mr.Donovan’s hand-picked finance director had been arrested by the FBI for fraudulently accepting campaign donations, the governor’s facile response to the nomination by his party of former convict Ernie Newton to his old state senate seat -- all this and more suggest that the vital center of the state Democratic Party has been somewhat corrupted. This kind of corruption is the handmaiden of the one party state oblivious to its political responsibilities. Unless there is a voter reaction to one party rule, it will not be long before the entire state goes the way of its one party urban centers.

In any case, there is no middle in Connecticut politics any longer. We are all progressives now.

All In The Family

And finally, we learn from a report in the Hearst papers that the head of a new SuperPAC, Future PAC, devoted to electing U.S. Representative Chris Murphy to the U.S. Senate was a “member of Murphy's wedding party five years ago.”

Linda McMahon spokesman Tim Murtaugh snorted, upon hearing the news, “So they're not going to coordinate and communicate for six months. I'm not sure that passes the laugh test." SuperPACs and the politicians they boost are not supposed to consort with each other while in the process of scratching each other’s backs.

“On Aug. 18, 2007,” according to the Greenwich Times, “Murphy married Catherine Holahan at the Wake Robin Inn in Lakeville, according to the couple's wedding announcement in the New York Times, which noted that the ceremony was officiated by Ellen Ash Peters, a retired chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court…

“Murphy mouthpiece Ben Marter dismissed the McMahon campaign's notion of collusion, characterizing it as nothing more than innuendo.

"’Chris didn't ask these guys to do this, and we don't have any control over what they do," Marter said. ‘We're focused on the things we can control: our campaign, our message, and our unparalleled and growing grassroots organization.’"

The Jaws That Bite, the Claws That Snatch

Dan Roberti, a Democrat running for the U.S House in Connecticut’s 5th District has called upon Democratic Party nominee Chris Donovan to quit the race.

"It is time for Chris Donovan to withdraw from the primary race for the good of the Connecticut Democratic Party and to protect the seat,”Mr. Roberti said following an indictment returned by a Grand Jury of Mr. Donovan’s former campaign director Robert Braddock. “He has hidden behind lawyers and never stepped up to explain how members of his campaign staff could have arranged conduit contributions without his knowledge."

Following Mr. Roberti’s invitation to withdraw, Donovan campaign manager Tom Swan declared that Mr. Donovan remains, even after damning disclosures, the strongest Democrat in the race.

Mr. Donovan was nominated at the Democratic convention for the 5^th District seat now occupied by U.S. Representative Chris Murphy, the Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate seat that will be vacated when present Senator Joe Lieberman leaves office.

"We have a clear path to victory in August and November," Mr. Swan said.

Formerly a union organizer, Mr. Donovan has received the backing of union groups in the state that also have announced their formal support of Mr. Murphy’s candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

Mr. Donovan was nominated by his party when the campaign financing scandal was a tiny cloud no bigger than a finger tip on the political horizon. Following the nomination, the cloud has grown to menacing proportions and now threatens to blot out the shining Democratic campaign sun. Since Dannel Malloy was wafted into office on a promise of shared sacrifice, Connecticut has become, for all practical political purposes, a one party state, and there is little doubt among campaign watchers and too clever by half Democratic Party operatives that voter inertia and political force majeure exerted by office holding Democrats will largely determine the outcome of the upcoming elections.

The published indictment of Mr. Braddock does not help Mr. Donovan’s campaign. In both an earlier affidavit and now in the indictment, Mr. Braddock has been accused of conspiring to accept conduit campaign contributions, illegal donations falsely made by one person in the name of another.

It is, however, the disquieting details included both in the affidavit supporting Mr. Braddock’s arrest and the recently released Grand Jury indictment that should cause Democrats in the state to contemplate getting together a delegation of politicos that might convince Mr. Donovan to take a bullet for his party.

According to the Braddock indictment, the roll your own scandal was a spin off investigation of an earlier federal probe concerning “the way federal money has been spent to remove lead paint from the homes of low-income families.” Federal investigators had discovered that one of the people who had signed an illegal conduit check for the Donovan campaign was connected with a business under investigation in the lead paint removal program. In investigations of this kind, one thing leads to another, and soon the best laid plans of mice and men are torn asunder.

The scorpion’s stings in the conduit campaign contribution scandal remain hidden. Mr. Braddock’s indictment, according to one report, suggest more shoes are to drop, “including the possibility that the FBI arranged to have union activist Ray Soucy wear a wire to record a conversation with Donovan at the Democratic State Convention about accepting illegal contributions in exchange for killing a piece of legislation related to ‘roll your own’ tobacco shops.”

Mr. Soucy – like Mr. Donovan before his election to the House, a good portion of which has been spent as a Speaker steering bills through the legislative sausage maker– was a union operative before he was caught up in the FBI investigation centering on members of Mr. Donavan’s campaign staff. It was Mr. Soucy – co-conspirator 1 (CC1) in the affidavit that secured his arrest – who coached two roll your own store owners under investigation for a meeting with Mr. Donovan by cautioning them not to mention pending bills relating to roll you own shops in Connecticut. Eyes and ears were everywhere, Mr. Soucy advised: “… there is always people following this guy around, watching what he's doing …" During their meeting inside a restaurant, the tobacco owners, Mr. Donovan’s arrested former finance director and Mr. Donovan discussed“various issues relating to the roll your own industry in Connecticut,"according to the Grand Jury indictment.

Was Mr. Soucy, already deeply implicated in the scandal, wired during conversations he might have had with Donovan? Were other co-conspirators wired when they conspired with Mr. Soucy? Is Mr. Soucy, under threat of prosecution, the only singing canary serenading prosecutors? Where are the scorpion stingers? What does the FBI know, and when did it know it?

Barring leaks from behind the thus far leak-proof barricades, answers to these questions may not be forthcoming before the election. Until such questions can be answered with some degree of certitude, those within the Democratic Party who owe Mr. Donovan their silence and a studied indifference to possible political repercussions will consider themselves safe from provocative criticism.

And later?

Later is for later. In a free country, professional politicians who winked at the damaging data in both the affidavit securing the arrest of Mr. Braddock and the Grand Jury indictment can always plead ignorance. And in the bluest state in the Northeast, the penalties assigned for willful ignorance are mild and survivable.

Donovan’s Pandora’s Box

Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan’s bid for the U.S. House is beginning to look like the inside of Pandora’s Box.

Those who have kept up with their Greek mythology will recognize Pandora as the first woman, created from water and earth by Hephaestus, the god of craftsmanship. At her creation, she was endowed with many godly gifts: Athena draped her in rich clothes; Aphrodite blessed her with beauty; Hermes bestowed on her the gift of speech. But there was a problem.

Prometheus, whose name means forethought, had rebelled against the gods on behalf of men, gifting them with fire and knowledge, for which effrontery he was punished by Zeus, who presented Pandora to Prometheus’brother, Epimetheus. Here, temptation entered the world. Given a beautiful box and warned never to open it, her godly gifts -- most especially curiosity -- induced her to open the box, at which point all the evils of the world flew out, spreading over the earth and contaminating the race of men.

FBI investigations of political corruption often involve the opening of political Pandora boxes.

Media curiosity – even saintly journalists are not free of human imperfections -- has now alighted on “a key member of Speaker of the House Chris Donovan’s legislative staff” who had refused “to cooperate with an internal investigation he [former U.S. Attorney Stan Twardy] launched into alleged campaign finance law violations in his [Mr. Donovan’s] 5th District Congress campaign,” according to one news report.

The Twardy investigation, which inferentially cleared Mr. Dovovan of corruption, was considerably hampered -- some would say rendered pointless -- by the refusal of principals under investigation by the FBI, all associates of Mr. Donovan, to participate in the investigator’s probe.

Among the refusenicks were Robert Braddock, Mr. Donovan’s fired finance director, and Donovan campaign manager Josh Nassi – both of whom were intimately involved with Mr. Donovan’s bid for the U.S. House in the 5^thDistrict.

Could Ms. Jordan, one columnist queried, have been “the conduit between the campaign and the powerful engine of doing favors for friends in the speaker’s office? She was, until recently, in a close personal relationship with fired Donovan campaign manager Joshua Nassi, who has been identified as one of three co-conspirators with Braddock

Ms. Jordan, herself a lawyer, has now lawyered-up. In investigations of this kind, lawyers interposed between possible political criminals and the media serve the same purpose as did mail vests in the age of chivalry. The arrows of outrageous fortune are sometimes prevented from striking a vital organ by lawyers who advise their clients to refrain from talking with, among others, Mr. Twardy. In the modern age, not patriotism but lawyers have become the last refuge of scoundrels.

In the meantime, the probe continues, as does Mr. Donovan’s limping campaign for the U.S. Congress.

A Grand Jury indictment, according to a report,“lays out an alleged conspiracy between Braddock, Raymond Soucy, a top corrections union official [who has now requested early retirement], three unidentified roll-your-own shop owners and two other campaign aides, identified by sources as Joshua Nassi and Sarah Waterfall, to provide money for the campaign in exchange for House Speaker Donovan killing the bill.”

The indictment,according to another report, fleshes out charges made in an earlier affidavit that secured the arrest of Mr. Braddock and brings Mr. Donovan close to the conspiracy to fraudulently disguise campaign contributions for the purpose of affecting legislation that would impact roll your own in Connecticut: “It shows that there was discussion among tobacco store owners and another individual identified as a conspirator of channeling tens of thousands of dollars to Donovan's campaign. One such discussion took place, according to the indictment, outside a Meriden restaurant in November just moments before two roll-your-own store owners were scheduled to meet with Donovan.”

If the Twardy report was an awkward attempt to review the Elizabethan age without mentioning the contributions of Queen Elizabeth or the plays of William Shakespeare, the Braddock indictment brings the principal actors associated with Donovan on stage in more explicit roles.

Here we see Mr. Soucy telling two roll your own unindicted co-conspirators prior to a meeting he had arranged with Mr. Donovan that neither should mention any bills because "the men in black running around . . . all the time . . . and we say, 'hey, we don't want you to do this bill,' . . . that's the same as me giving him a twenty, hundred dollar bill, 'let me go on the (expletive) two ounces you got me with'."

Following the Braddock indictment, Mr. Donovan’s new campaign manager – Tom Swan, executive director of the once non-partisan Connecticut Citizen Action Group, now a shill for Democratic Party mackerels shining in the moonlight – dispensed the usual palliatives, while Mr. Donovan’s campaign spokesman Gabe Rosenberg assured the media that “Nothing in this indictment is inconsistent with the findings of the independent Twardy report.”

Singing canaries are everywhere, and threats of prosecution likely have them sharing with the FBI information they have withheld from Mr. Twardy. Despite repeated calls for Mr. Donovan to drop his campaign for the U.S. Congress -- none issuing from Governor Dannel Malloy, a former prosecutor and the titular head of the Democratic Party -- Mr. Donovan is moving forward resolutely into the continuing crisis.

The Devil And Stan Twardy

The Devil, it is sometimes said, lies in the details.

The Devil did not show his hand in the Twardy investigation of Speaker of the House Chris Donovan’s tawdry campaign for the U.S. House in Connecticut’s 5^thDistrict.

Mr. Donovan’s former finance director was arrested by the FBI in a sting operation in which straw contributors, the FBI showed in an arrest affidavit, violated campaign finance regulations. FBI investigators almost certainly are squeezing some of the principals involved in Speakergate to obtain from them information their lawyers have denied to Mr. Twardy.

Virtually all Mr. Donovan’s Republican campaign opponents have said Mr. Donovan either did or did not know that his finance director, Robert Braddock, was, to put it kindly, delinquent in avoiding the near occasion of arrest. If Mr. Donovan knew about the financing irregularities that led to Mr. Braddock’s arrest, he was participating in corrupt activity; and if he did not know, he is not competent, most of his rivals say, to become a U.S. Representative. Mr. Donovan’s Democratic primary opponent, Dan Roberti, has similarly spanked Mr. Donovan.

There is no painless way to escape the perilous jaws of this Either-Or.Former U.S. Attorney Stanley Twardy's report on Mr. Donovan’s connection with his office is depressingly uninformative.

Mr. Twardy – sidestepping Will Rogers’ apothegm: “It’s not what you know that can hurt you; it’s what you doknow that ain’t so” – has presented Connecticut with a partial investigation. Many of the principals caught up in the FBI investigation refused on advice of council to be interviewed by Mr. Twardy, according to a Hartford Courant story. Any exculpatory conclusion drawn from unexamined facts is bound to be provisional.

The FBI’s investigation of Mr. Donovan’s political operations is certain to be more thorough. Even now, agents of the FBI or the State’s Attorney charged with prosecuting the case are squeezing principals whose lawyers have declined to speak to Mr. Twardy.

Mr. Donovan’s Republican opponent Mark Greenberg , who earlier called upon Mr. Donovan to drop his campaign and resign his Speaker position, issued a statement following Mr. Twardy’s media release that seems pertinent:

“By Mr. Twardy’s own admission, his report is incomplete and it leaves many questions unanswered. Much of the important relevant information was not forthcoming, and the investigation was hampered by the inability of Mr. Twardy to interview or receive documents from the principles in this scandal. People who commit crimes are not often reckless enough to leave a paper or email trail– the absence of such documentation is not surprising and accordingly, the“independent” investigation is certainly not conclusive. Unfortunately, the cloud of this campaign finance scandal will continue to hang over Donovan’s campaign until the federal investigation is concluded.

“Once again, I call on Chris Donovan to suspend his campaign for Congress. Nothing in the internal investigation diminishes the fact that the Speaker either knew or should have known of the illegal activity in his campaign. Whether it is a gross violation of the public trust or gross mismanagement, Chris Donovan is not an individual who should represent Connecticut in the United States Congress.”

The Donovan crisis is still unfolding.

Rowland On A River

As the John Rowland-Brian Foley FBI investigation unfolds, it will be important to bear in mind that neither Mr. Rowland nor Lisa Wilson Foley, Brian Foley’s wife, is an active politician.

According to a report in the Register Citizen,“A federal grand jury is investigating Rowland’s connections to the 5th District Congress campaign of Lisa Wilson-Foley. Rowland worked as an “unpaid volunteer” consultant to the campaign while at the same time being paid $30,000 by Apple Rehab, a company owned by Wilson-Foley’s husband.”

Mrs. Foley is running for the U.S. Congress and has not previously held office. Mr. Rowland is a radio talk show host for (WTIC) and an ex-felon who resigned his position as governor of the state. After having pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to steal honest service, Mr. Rowland spent a year in prison and four months under house arrest. Following his release, Mr. Rowland was hired by the Waterbury Chamber of Commerce to drum up business for the city, after which he became a successful radio talk show host for WTIC-AM. Mr. Rowland lost his Waterbury position after a change of mayors.

The political disconnect means that the FBI investigation will not focus on bill-rigging, since neither of the principles mentioned by the media in connection with an FBI probe of Mr. Rowland’s business relationship with Mrs. Foley’s husband could possibly have shaped legislation. Though FBI appearances may be exceedingly misleading at the opening of an investigation, it appears that the FBI probe of Speaker of the House Chis Donovan’s office does indeed center on possible bill-rigging. Unlike Mr. Donovan, Mr. Rowland’s influence over legislation is indirect, leveraged through his radio program, the same sort of influence exerted by political columnists, editors, reporters, television news readers and talking heads.

In some overheated brains, former Governor Rowland is the devil himself; but because Mr. Rowland is not an active politician, the corrupt influence he may exert over politics in his present position is no different in kind than that of a politically influential journalist. Journalism is full of worldly scribblers who have produced copy favorable to specific politicians, afterwards moving on to work for their darlings, in the course of which they are handsomely renumerated for their efforts. Moving from the world of journalism into politics, one leaves oneself open to the charge that the prospect of employment may have affected the journalistic product.

The Berlin Wall separating politics and journalism has in it a door that opens both ways. Some former journalists have moved into politics; some politicians have traveled in the opposite direction; both have occasionally set up shop as consultants. Just as war is diplomacy by other means, so consultancy is politics by other means.

Mr. Rowland’s route -- from politics to jail to journalism –is highly unorthodox, though not unprecedented. Forced to leave office after he pummeled a gentleman he had accused of stealing the affections of his wife, former Mayor of Providence Rhode Island Buddy Cianci found a soft berth in radio broadcasting, after which he ran for governor again and won. Providence bloomed under Mr. Cianci’s hand. Ten years later he was in jail, convicted on a single charge of racketeering conspiracy. Trial Judge Ronald R. Lagueux said of Mr. Cianci, “In this mayor's two administrations, there has been more corruption in the City of Providence than in the history of this state." Upon his release from prison, Mr. Cianci once again resumed radio broadcasting.

While comparisons have been made between Mr. Rowland and Democratic Party nominee for the 23rd State Senate District Ernie Newton, both of whom served time in prison, it is important to note crucial differences.

In Connecticut, where corruption should matter more than on the national stage – because this is where we all live — Republicans can no longer appreciably shape legislative bills and budgets or distribute political patronage. Since Republicans have lost the gubernatorial slot, Connecticut has become, for all practical purposes, a one party state. And this means that the kind of corruption one associates with pol;itically active office holders lies, except in the municipalities, almost wholly in the hands of Democrats.

At present, Mr. Newton is the Democratic Party candidate for the state Senate. Objections to his candidacy on the part of Democratic leaders in the General Assembly and the governor’s office have been muted to the point of indifference. Mr. Rowland is a talk show host whose ambitions for political office almost certainly would be rebuffed by his fellow Republicans.

Some friendly Republican would do Mr. Rowland a great service were he to tap the former governor the shoulder and whisper in his ear that large amounts of money honestly arrived at cannot be had in two professions – journalism or politics. There ain’t any gold in those mines.