Early Endorsements For The Greenberg Campaign

Mark Greenberg has been putting holes in his shoes since he last announced his candidacy for the U.S. House in Connecticut’s 5^th District.

Although the 2014 election is 17 months in the future, Mr. Greenberg already has issued some impressive endorsements.

"I am proud that so many leaders are supporting my campaign against Elizabeth Esty in the 5th Congressional District," Mr. Greenberg said. "These local and statewide leaders understand that Connecticut and our country cannot continue to follow the trail Obama and the Congressional Democrats are plodding down - a trail that has led only to economic stagnation, bigger government, and unprecedented intrusions on our liberties."

According to Mr. Greenberg’s press release, among Republican leaders who have committed early to Mr. Greenberg are:

State Representative Arthur J. O'Neill (Deputy Republican Leader-At-Large):

"I'm supporting Mark Greenberg because he has demonstrated a strong commitment to representing the people of the 5th District.  He has shown his commitment through his hard work in his previous campaigns to represent people of the 5th District based on the principles of the Republican Party."

Adam Grippo, Cheshire RTC Chairman/State Central Representative:

 "Mark Greenberg is the clear choice of voters who believe in the re-establishment of our inalienable rights and want responsibility returned to government."

 Paul Improta, Bethel RTC Chairman:

"I am proud to be endorsing Mark Greenberg for the Connecticut 5th U.S. Congressional District. Mark understands the issues affecting our state, and he has the experience and tenacity necessary to not only win a campaign, but when he gets to Washington he won't forget the reasons why he was sent there, and by whom. I know a winner when I see one, and Mark's a winner. I would encourage all Republicans to get behind Mark Greenberg, and let's win back the 5th district for Connecticut. We can be sure Mark will be a voice of sanity in Washington, DC, and a congressman we can all be proud of!"

Dwight Blint, New Britain RTC Chairman:

"I think Mark has proven that he is committed to the best interest of the residents of Connecticut, and to the success of his colleagues in the Republican Party. He has also shown himself to be a man of integrity and a true fiscal conservative. I am confident that if elected, he would bring a common sense approach that would benefit the taxpayers of Connecticut and our nation as a whole. That is why I urge my fellow Republicans to join me in supporting Mark."

Marianne Clark, Avon RTC/State Central Committee:

"I am proud to endorse Mark for the Fifth Congressional District. Mark Greenberg is a pillar in the conservative movement in Connecticut. Mark's campaign is about the people and the country we love. He genuinely cares about the public he seeks to serve and he has what it takes to fight for us in Washington. Mark has my vote and I encourage you to join me in supporting Mark Greenberg for Congress."

Mr. Greenberg lost the Republican Party nomination to then State Senator Andrew Roraback in a hotly contested earlier bid for the U.S. House.

On the Democratic side, the U.S. Congressional campaign of Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan, an early favorite, ran aground when the FBI opened an investigation into attempts by a union connected lobbyist to influence through illegal campaign donations the passage of a bill that for purposes of tax collections would have treated Roll Your Own (RYO) tobacco shops as cigarette manufacturers. Mr. Donovan, whose campaign finance chairman recently was found guilty of accepting a bribe, withdrew from the race, leaving the field open to Elizabeth Esty. Ms. Esty, the wife of Governor Dannel Malloy’s Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), went on to defeat Mr. Roraback, who subsequently was nominated by Governor Dannel Malloy to Connecticut’s Superior Court, effectively removing him from the U.S. Congressional chessboard.

It’s still a long way to Tipperary, but Mr. Greenberg has now through his endorsements given his campaign an impressive boost.

Courant Endorsements

The last of the Hartford Courant’s increasingly irrelevant U.S. Congressional delegation endorsements appeared in the paper on Friday.

The Courant -- shocking the entire state – endorsed U.S. Representative Chris Murphy over former soft-porn WWE impresario Linda McMahon who, in the course of her run for Joe Lieberman’s soon to be vacant seat, snubbed Connecticut’s left of center media.

Courant endorsements are “conservative” in the bad sense. Connecticut’s congressional delegation is non-diverse; all the members of the delegation are Democrats, and it is clear, following the paper’s endorsement of Elizabeth Esty over moderate Republican Andrew Roraback, that the publisher of the paper and its editorial board members prefer it this way.

Adding its endorsement of Democrat Elizabeth Esty’s to that of former Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi, the Hartford Courant in its editorial, “Democrat's positions edge Andrew Roraback's bona fides,” tipped its hat to moderate Republican challenger Andrew Roraback’s bona fides, but found that his fides weren’t bona enough.

Mr. Roraback has billed himself during his campaign against Mrs. Esty, the wife of Governor Dannel Malloy’s Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), Daniel Esty, as a moderate Republican. In left of center editorial board lingo, “moderates” are much preferred over conservative and libertarian Republicans. Mr. Roraback earned his stripes as a moderate by setting himself apart from doctrinaire Republicans elsewhere in the country and flashing his bona fides as a “fiscal conservative,” code language to indicate his disassociation from disreputable“social conservatives,” not to mention toxic members of the much misunderstood– one might say purposelymisunderstood – members of the Tea Party.

Perhaps if Mr. Roraback had billed himself as a “maverick Republican,” following in the footsteps of former U.S. Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker, his fides would have been acceptable to the Courant’s editorial board. A maverick, as opposed to a moderate, is a Republican whose active distaste for all things Republican places him firmly in the Democratic camp.

Maverick Republicans are masked Democrats working within the party to subvert it. They are disguised sappers, ideological first cousins of the editorial writers at the Courant who generally advance super subtle reasons for bestrewing endorsements on leftist candidates.

Reason number one: The endorsed candidate has more practical experience than the challenger. Since Democrats in Connecticut, with invaluable assists from sappers, now command the governor’s office, the state House, the state Senate and the state Supreme Court -- Yes Virginia, the court is subtly affected by powerful partisan politicians, whatever you may have read about its vaunted courageous independence – the Courant’s rationale supports the present status quo Democratic hegemon.

The first casualty of this all too convenient rationale is the much cited journalistic doctrine that the proper mission of the media, when it is doing its job, is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Within Connecticut, comfortable Democrats-for-life occupying gerrymandered districts, such as U.S. Representatives John Larson and multimillionaire Rosa DeLauro, are among scores of incumbent Democrats unmolested by the state’s purported non-partisan left of center media. Consistently applied, the doctrine that one should always vote for the more experienced candidate is subversive of democracy, which depends upon a fluid and diverse governing class: It is an argument favoring permanent and unchanging governance – perpetual rule by incumbents.

It should be noted that in its Esty endorsement the Courant carved out an exception to its own general rule. Of the two candidates vying for the U.S. House in the 5^th District, Mr. Roraback has more governing experience. And he certainly meets the paper’s second criteria without which candidates for office fail to receive its endorsements: The potential endorsee must forswear any political alliance with national Republicans on so called “social issues.” In this regard, true believing editorialists on the left reflexively support progressive Democrats.

Mrs. Esty, more reliably left wing than Mr. Roraback, was blessed with the Courant’s endorsement -- because the paper’s principle ideological duty, now and forever, is to hold back a fictitious horde of conservatives from assaulting the gates of paradise, a utopian vision of governance in which the governing authority overwhelms what social scientists sometimes call mediating institutions: the family, the church, voluntary associations, independent business enterprises, a non-partisan media and, somewhere close to the top of the list, a reified Republican Party dedicated to weaning the individual from a paternalistic state

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.