Another Day, Another Crony Capitalist: Where Is The Republican Populist?

Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell may be right. Even on their best day, Republicans running for office do not know how to frame an issue so that it will appeal to those not born to the purple.

A story written by Steve Collins of the Bristol Press provides a case in point.

Governor Dannel Malloy had just disbursed $10 million in urban tax credits to ESPN, a well-known and prosperous sports broadcasting network that very likely did not need a handout from Mr. Malloy.

Tucked within Mr. Collins' story, one finds this line: “It’s not clear, though, that the state money made much difference to the project’s completion, since ESPN had already said it would build the center before Malloy picked it to receive state financial aid.”

All the political honchos showed up for the ritualistic “cable cutting.” Cameras clicked, and the assembled politicians all smiled. Their smiles plainly said, “But for our generous contribution in tax credits, this miracle might not have happened at all.”

That message may not have reached Mr. Collins' desk. But it is plain from the line quoted above that, if such a message was pressed upon him by Mr. Malloy’s well-oiled communications machine, he was not convinced that the $175 million project easily might have gone forward without Mr. Malloy’s $10 million contribution.  ESPN is a big boy, not a bumbling upstart operation. We should all send up a rousing cheer in praise of media skepticism.

All the politicians present at the cable cutting were taking political campaign bows. Present at the opening of ESPN’s new “Digital Center-2, a 194,000 square foot, five-studio facility in Bristol, were  Bristol Mayor Ken Cockayne, ESPN president John Skipper of the SportsCenter, Governor Malloy, shown cutting the cable with a massive scissors, and U. S. Representative John Larson of the impregnable 1^st District.

Mr. Collins notes, “Malloy, whose ‘First Five’ program pumped $10 million in urban tax credits into the project, called it ‘a great day for us’ to see it completed. The stimulus money agreement between the state and ESPN, announced almost three years ago, was only signed last Friday after lawyers for both sides wrangled over details.”

The “great day” occurred, it will be noticed, within the context of an election period. The Democratic and Republican nominating conventions had been concluded days earlier. 

It is difficult to tell here who is putting the lipstick on which pig, but it looks like ESPN is doing Governor Dannel Malloy the favor. ESPN gets tax money the company did not need to open a facility that would have opened without Mr. Malloy’s unnecessary contribution, and Mr. Malloy takes a campaign bow freighted with meaning.

The meaning will be spun out by Democrats across the state in the upcoming elections: Democrats are doing things to maintain prosperity and jobs – don’t forget jobs –during the malingering Bush recession. 

What is the real meaning of the bow? Where does the money given by Mr. Malloy to ESPN come from? Who benefits from Mr. Malloy’s magnificent gesture? Would Mr. Larson, running in a district last won by a Republican in 1957, have been re-elected to office had he not participated in the ESPN festivities?

Will women owners of nail salons benefit from Mr. Malloy’s redundant generosity?

When Mr. Malloy imposed on Connecticut the largest tax increase in its history, Nail Salons appeared on a list produced by the Yankee Institute showing companies and people hit by Mr. Malloy’s new taxes. None of the companies or people represented on that list were present at the ESPN cable cutting. Indeed, no person or company represented on a Yankee Institute list showing Connecticut’s 371 sources of revenue was within camera range when Mr. Malloy took his campaign bow.  But this is where Mr. Malloy’s unnecessary $10 million tax giveaway to ESPN came from.

And every dollar Mr. Malloy and the Democratic dominated General Assembly has appropriated from one of the state’s 371 separate sources of revenue is a dollar that otherwise might have been used to expand a business or produce a job or increase a salary of someone in Connecticut who is not employed by ESPN.

So then, here we are: Big Government has given Big Business Big Tax dollars appropriated from the Little People.

And what do Republicans running for office this year say about it?

Where are the populist Republicans among us who might be able to mold a message from all the data laboriously assembled by the Yankee Institute that would appeal not to Fairfield based plutocrats – but to women who work in Nail Salons?

Really, where are they? Their state is in desperate need of them. What has made them swallow their tongues?

McMahon And Shays At UConn

After the debate at UConn between Republican contenders for the U.S. Senate Chris Shays and Linda McMahon, Mr. Shays, who mounted the stage favored by Connecticut’s left of center media, temporarily lost a few votes within the journalistic community.
David Collins of the Day in New London wrote:

“McMahon did so much better in Thursday's debate that it makes you wonder why she isn't the one calling for more debates in the primary campaign, not Shays…

“Shays looked every bit as testy, annoyed and frustrated at the end as when the debate started…”

“Shays on Thursday just seemed kind of mean-spirited.”

Mr. Shays’testiness began, Mr. Collins noted, with a microphone malfunction.

“In fact, Shays threw a bit of a tantrum at the outset when there was a problem with the auditorium sound system at the University of Connecticut.

“He snapped a terse ‘no’ when offered a handheld microphone, saying everyone should just wait until the wireless microphones were fixed. Everyone did wait.

“Then, once the debate was under way, the former congressman turned irritable again every time McMahon ducked one of his insults about her tenure as head of World Wrestling Entertainment, as if she were somehow approaching him with a WWE handheld microphone.”

It may not be the case that Mr. Shays’ testiness arose from annoyance at the thought that “someone who peddled TV trash would take a Senate seat he considers his due.” Mr. Shays does not strike most people who know him well as the prototypical arrogant politician. In politics, however, appearances are perceived as reality. More likely, the former U.S. Representative wished to communicate his personal distaste with the raunch exhibited at some past World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) events. This distaste may have appeared as arrogance to some in the audience. Perhaps Mr. Shays could use a new debate coach.
The first rule of debate is this: When the audience has come to see a public debate, you’d best give then a debate rather than a public thrashing.

At the Hartford Courant, Rick Green scored the debate a win for Mrs. McMahon:

“But the lasting image of Linda McMahon is a candidate who stuck to her talking points and who brought the discussion back to the economy whenever Shays went nuclear. Because of that, she didn’t lose. For a candidate with a big lead, that’s all that matters. And with only one more debate scheduled, she’s more than half way to the nomination.”

The Shays camp is making fatal errors based on a few misleading theories.

The notion that Mrs. McMahon can buy elections with her personal fortune was put to flight during her last run for the U.S. Senate in a contest with then Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who won U.S. Senator Chris Dodd’s vacant seat after Mrs. McMahon spent an inordinate amount of money -- $50 million in round numbers – attempting to defeat him. You cannot plausibly argue that Mrs. McMahon can buy a U.S Senate seat with money alone in the face of such a rout without appearing to be the much derided “used car salesman” of ancient memory.

It is not true that Mr. Shays can prevail over Mrs. McMahon by harnessing WWE thunderbolts deployed effectively by Mr. Blumenthal in his campaign. Every campaign is different and, whatever virtues he may possess, Mr. Shays is no Mr. Blumenthal. Neither is U.S. Representative Chris Murphy, the likely Democratic candidate for U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman’s soon to be vacant seat, Mr. Blumenthal. When you change the characterization in a play, you end up with a different narrative. Even Mrs. McMahon is not the same performer she was in her earlier campaign, and the differences were noticed in her most recent debate by commentators fully prepared to support Mr. Shays.

Some commentators remarked that Mrs. McMahon during her debate was well “scripted,” a devil word usually employed by opponents to suggest that there is no “there” there. But the absence of a “there” was not at all apparent during the UConn debate.

Why?

Mr. Shays, content to hurl flaccid thunderbolts, did not confront Mrs. McMahon on her program – which is detailed and thoroughly assimilated. Mrs. McMahon is not simply saying her lines trippingly on the tongue. Her program is an authentic reflection of her own passionately held views. And Mrs. McMahon is not the wooden, empty headed WWE bugaboo displayed in scores of reports written by left of center progressively inclined commentators whose dearest wish is that Mr. Murphy will not make the same mistakes made by Mr. Shays in his UConn debate with Mrs. McMahon.

Blumenthal to Courant: Bug Off!

John Lender, the Hartford Courant’s investigative reporter, caught a "mislead" on the part of Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in information he had provided for a biographical listing in the annual Martindale-Hubble Law Directory of attorneys at private law firms.

Summarizing his military service, Blumenthal offered: “With USMC [U.S. Marine Corp], active duty and reserve. 1970-1976.”

In Lender’s Sunday “Government Watch” column, an opinion on the misstatement was solicited from Randall Collins of Waterford, a Vet whose “active duty” included a stretch in Vietnam in the late 60’s.

"’I think [active duty] was probably put in there to be misleading, based on all these other things,’ said Randall H. Collins of Waterford, who served in Vietnam in the late 1960s in the U.S. Army military intelligence division. An unaffiliated voter, Collins, 65, who is Waterford's superintendent of schools, is in the Connecticut Veterans Hall of Fame, established in 2005 to honor those who served honorably and ‘continue to serve and inspire their fellow man.’

"’I was repulsed by his comments’ in the 2008 videotaped speech, said Collins. ‘I consider it a lie, not a misstatement.’

"As to the Martindale-Hubbell entry, he said: ‘I think it's both accurate and misleading: It's true that boot camp [training] is considered active duty,’ Collins said, ‘but when people think of active duty, they think of something longer than six months…. They think of a longer period of time’ of ‘full-time’ military service – not part-time reserve status in this country for six years with weekend duty once a month, and two-week drills in the summer.

"’It's hard to say it's not technically accurate,’ Collins said. ‘I really think it would be insignificant if it weren't for the comments he made publicly about his duty. But when you contextualize it in a pattern, it becomes a little more suspicious. Rightly or wrongly, you read into his motivation of why he put it there.’"

Lender’s report was what is called in the business “balanced.”

Another Vietnam vet, Jack Dougherty of Branford, was quoted in the report as saying:

“’At that time, the reservists and the guys who were going to be there forever and ever were side by side in the same, exact boot camp,’ said Dougherty, who works as a mechanical engineer and is an unaffiliated voter. Dougherty said that the reservists ‘served their active duty for six months. The balance would be … reserve status,’ with periodic activities such as drills.

“Asked what he thought of the recent disclosures about Blumenthal's misstatements, Doughterty said, ‘I'm not bent around the axle about it like some people are.’ He said, ‘I don't know if he misspoke in the past,’ but ‘my personal opinion is that he's a nice guy and does a great job in the category we find him in,’ as attorney general."

Another Marine, Bob Janick, was in a forgiving mood:

“Another member of the Veterans Hall of Fame, Marine Corps Vietnam veteran Bob Janicki of Guilford, said that he has ‘struggled for years with imposters,’ and noted that recently he'd said after Blumenthal's apology, ‘I don't forgive him.’

“But now, Janicki, 63, a Republican voter who works for the federal Veterans Administration, said he is writing a letter to newspaper editors about a conversation he had since then with Blumenthal. Part of it says: ‘Mr. Blumenthal shared with me his personal feelings on what he may have said over the years, and I truly feel that he was honestly sincere, and I believe him. Personally I am not about to go back in time and review every quote presented by the media. I will never trust them, to determine if they were in context or taken out of context.’"

Lender wanted to probe Blumenthal’s opinion on all this. In the past, Blumenthal never had been hesitant in sharing his opinion concerning cases he was prosecuting with the state’s media. In fact, his press releases over the 20 year period Blumenthal served as attorney general, bundled together, would make a hefty package that Blumenthal spokeswoman and advisor Marla Romash, who used to write for the Courant, would have a tough time bench pressing.

Romash brushed him off: “The Courant had asked to interview Blumenthal, but Romash returned the call and responded to questions, saying, ‘He's addressed all these issues.’"

Over in Torrington, the Torrington Register Citizen reports, Blumenthal left a public stage with his pants on fire rather than submitting to the indignity of a few questions.

And what was it, anyway, Lender wanted to ask the suddenly camera shy Blumenthal?

Lender, who does his homework, notes:

“The 1991 volume of the who's-who-style directory of lawyers in private practice was the last of seven or so annual editions covering Blumenthal's time from 1984 to 1990 as a partner in the Stamford law firm of Silver Golub & Teitell; that was his last job before winning the 1990 election for attorney general and assuming office in January 1991. Earlier editions of the directory worded Blumenthal's military history one word differently — with the word "in" instead of "and," as follows: ‘With USMC., active duty in reserve, 1970-1976.’ Romash had no explanation for that difference.”

Gotta watch those prepositions. Mark Twain used to say that “the difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between a lightning bug and a lightning bolt.”

It was not a lightning bug that struck Blumenthal when the said at least five times that he had served in Vietnam.

Twain, by the way, would have had no difficulty distinguishing between a lie and a misspeak. Pity he is not writing commentary for the Hartford Courant.