Malloy vs. Pelto

The gubernatorial nomination on the Republican side is heavily, if politely, contested. In a few days, Republican nominating delegates will gather at Mohegan Sun Casino to sort out their ticket. On the Democratic side, the gubernatorial slot is a Malloy gimme – almost.

State employee union gadfly Jonathan Pelto continues to sting Governor Dannel Malloy.

Mr. Malloy’s temperament, like that of President Barack Obama, is sting averse. The Malloyalists who surround him sting back when stung. Both they and their chief have thin skins. And Mr. Malloy, when caught in a compromising position, has been known to throw a few elbows at his critics.

In the past, whenever Mr. Pelto had harpooned Mr. Malloy on his blog “Wait, What?” gubernatorial factotum Roy Occhiogrosso, who has parleyed his Malloy connection into a Vice Presidential slot with Global Strategy, leapt forward to answer Mr. Pelto with a box on the ear.

“No one cares what Pelto thinks,” said Mr. Occhiogrosso after Mr. Pelto had pelted Mr. Malloy for having joined the forces of darkness by attempting to purge Connecticut’s educational system of underperforming teachers who, Mr. Malloy felt, had only to “show up for four years” to achieve tenure, after which dismissal for rank incompetence becomes decidedly less frequent.

Even so, Mr. Malloy last January issued a letter underwritten by Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, House Speaker Brendan Sharkey and Senate President Donald E. Williams that delayed, according to one report “an important component of the new evaluation system: linking a teacher's performance rating with students' standardized test scores. Malloy also said he would create a working group to make changes in the implementation of the new Common Core State Standards. The administration will also scrap a $1 million marketing campaign for the Common Core.”

The decoupling of teacher performance and test scores, as well as the canning of a million dollar marketing campaign for Common Core, strenuously resisted by both teacher unions and many conservative groups, certainly did not bode ill for Mr. Pelto.

Conservatives and teacher unions oppose the Common Core effort for quite different reasons. Teacher unions are rather touchy on standards of any kind linked to student performance that might be used to weed out non-performing teachers; conservatives, comfortable with the principle of subsidiarity, do not want the federal government to do to education what it has done to, say, the private insurance market.

We have here a case of political ends touching and producing unmanageable political sparks. Without abjectly retreating from his school reform efforts – not in the cards -- Mr. Malloy has bent himself into a pretzel shape so as to remain in the good graces of the powerful unions whose votes he needs to whip in a general election the Republican Party’s gubernatorial nominee. Once the election is in the bag, Mr. Pelto will have been politically neutered, and Mr. Malloy’s education reforms, momentarily put on the back burner, may be resurrected from the “working group” to which the reforms have been entrusted for safe keeping. To parody Mr. Obama in his pre-presidential election meeting with Dimitri Medvedev, Mr. Malloy will have considerably “more flexibility,” following his victorious election, to repair burnt bridges with unions and to deep six the annoying Mr. Pelto.

There are three reasons why candidates for office enter campaigns: They’re in it to win; they’re in it to make an exotic political point; or they’re in it to affect the correlation of forces, so that the candidate’s views will be upheld by the likely candidate in a general election.

At this point, only Mr. Pelto and his conscience knows which of the three reasons cited above has moved him to suggest, very coyly in an appearance on Eyewitness News’ “Face The State” with Dennis House that a) Mr. Malloy can’t win the race for governor, and b) he might primary Mr. Malloy, if the delegates to the Democratic nominating convention are not enlightened enough to choose him on the first ballot as their gubernatorial standard bearer.

WFSB 3 Connecticut

The Gun Bill, A Flawed Design

Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams, the Chanticleer of gun regulation in Connecticut, was in a crowing mood when he announced publically a set of gun regulations the General Assembly was expected pass in response to the mass slaughter of students and faculty at Sandy Hook Elementary school.

"There were some,” Mr. Williams said, “who said the 'Connecticut effect' would wear off —that it would wear off in Connecticut and it would wear off across the country. What they didn't know was that Democrats and Republicans would come together and work to put together the strongest and most comprehensive bill in theUnited States to fight gun violence, to strengthen the security at our schools, and to provide the mental health services that are necessary.”

Republican state House Minority Leader Larry Cafero concurred. “Knowing that that tragedy happened in Connecticut, it was up to Connecticut to show the way. And I'm very proud to say today the package that we are introducing ... has accomplished that goal."

Connecticut, head ofthe pack in regrettable firsts – first in the nation in high taxes, first in high debt obligations, first in poor credit rating, first in the worst Achievement Gap -- now, according to Mr. Williams, is first in the nation in gun regulation, presumably outpacing even Illinois. Cook County in Illinois includes Chicago, murder capital of the United States and, prior to the Connecticut bill expected to be reported out of committees and quickly passed into law, a city with the most stringent gun regulations in the United States.

Most gun regulations, however comprehensive, do not affect the misuse of weapons by criminals who, generally, are no respecters of laws or persons; which is why, come to think of it, many people choose to arm themselves with weapons sufficient to repel home invasions of the kind that occurred in Cheshire some months before the General Assembly repealed capital punishment laws in Connecticut. The Cheshire home invasion in which three women were murdered by two paroled prisoners induced a massive spike in gun sales in the state. The prospect of the passage of the current bill further restricting the lawful use of guns by non-criminals produced the same effect: People in the state, especially those who lived in rural areas distant from first responders were stocking up on guns and ammunition before the Connecticut legislature could restrict the supply.

The provisions of the bill expected to be written into law by a bipartisan majority in the General Assembly will not likely affect the criminal misuse of firearms: The provision requiring a criminal background check of sales, while useful, will move underground the illegal sale of weapons used in crimes; so also with provisions restricting the sale of magazines to ten rounds and a provision requiring the safe storage of weapons.

Major studies on the criminal use of weapons conclude that instant background check systems on all sales of weapons, which force criminals to use straw purchasers, as well as liberal open carry laws minimally deter the criminal use of weapons. A study that correlated the FBI’s gun crime rankings for homicides, robberies and assaults with both Brady Campaign rankings measuring the strength of state gun laws and Mayors Against Illegal Guns’ rankings showed no correlation between crime rates on the one hand and the strength of such laws and disclosure requirements on the other.

The impetus for the Connecticut legislation that adds 100 new guns to an already long list of proscribed weapons was, as Connecticut politicians never tired of reminding us, the mass slaughter of school children and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It was always a chancy proposition to extrude an effective bill from that slaughter house, chiefly because investigators have kept close to their chests much of the necessary data that could inform such a bill. A final criminal report is not due until late June, months after the bill has been passed.

Under that section of the current bill describing measures to increase school safety, the impetus for the entire legislative effort, one finds a provision creating a “School Safety Infrastructure Council” tasked with developing standards for upgrading the physical infrastructure of school buildings, but no provisions requiring or financingthe placement of Security Resource Officers (SROs) in schools.

The people of Newtown, doubtless more interested in securing the safety of their children than most concerned politicians, leapt far ahead of Connecticut’s General Assembly and the national legislature when the town’s Board of Finance appropriated early in March $420,000 to pay for armed security guards in all of its public schools, also setting aside $180,000 in its Board of Selectmen’s budget to pay for armed guards in its private schools.

Sandy Hook has taught the people of Newtown – and most recently Enfield, which has also financed armed personnel in schools -- that bullets cannot be stopped by teachers, however brave, or oleaginous politicians, however genuine their concern may at first sight appear.

General Assembly Declines To Deliberate on Gun Issues

It was the intention of certain members of the General Assembly from the very moment the Bipartisan Task Force On Gun Violence Prevention And Children's Safety was formed to “e-cert”the normal legislative process, State Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams said in a recent interview.

The emergency certification of a bill bypasses usual legislative hearings and requires, as the name itself implies, an emergency to justify it. Generally, e-certs are reserved for times of crisis such as natural disasters or when action cannot be delayed because of an approaching timeline.

In this case, the “emergency”was triggered by a timeline set by legislative leaders who had tasked the bipartisan task force to complete its recommendations to the legislature before February 28, so that a bill could be produced on that date. Apparently, it is the assigned date that has created the emergency, which begs a question: If the task force completes its work on the 29^th rather than the 28^thwill the legislature emergency certify its gun control measures without benefit of the committee’s work simply to meet a deadline?

The answer to that question, one supposes, would be no. And the answer exposes what may be a subtle legislative fraud.

The multiple murders at Sandy Hook, however horrific, were exceptional; when was the last time, other than at Sandy Hook, that a slaughter of 20 children and 6 faculty members occurred in Connecticut? For purposes of legislation, exceptions of this kind should not be discounted, but the ordinary legislative process is designed to produce as its end product a bill that has been properly vetted the provisions of which have been sufficiently debated by legislators whose votes sanction the committee work on the bill.

It should not be the business of the General Assembly to decline to do its business or to assign its constitutional responsibilities to ad hoc committees created either by the legislature or the governor. Legislative short cuts of this kind that leave fewer fingerprints on a final bill allow cowardly politicians to assign responsibility for defective legislation to non-elected entities.

Speaking at the last of four public hearings on gun control in an empty Newtown High School auditorium, Mr. Williams explained why a bill on gun control must be produced without benefit of the usual committee hearings. The haste to produce a bill in the absence of data certified by the principal crime investigators – a final criminal report will not be due until March, if then – is a result of constituent demand: “When our constituents say 'We don't necessarily have all the answers, but we want you to do the right thing,' we need to rise to that challenge – and that's why we have this bipartisan task force," said Mr. Williams.

At the beginning of January, Governor Dannel Malloy announced “the formation of the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, an expert panel that will review current policy and make specific recommendations in the areas of public safety, with particular attention paid to school safety, mental health, and gun violence prevention.” That panel’s initial report willnot be due until March 15, two weeks beyond the date the legislature has set to produce a bill that presumably will accomplish the same purpose without committee hearings.

This is legislating with a purpose. Unfortunately, it would appear that the purpose is not to write a bill that would satisfy the deepest longings of the parents in Sandy Hook whose children were so violently taken from them. Those parents want a bill that will quench the fire in their blood, so that after its passage everyone in Connecticut may say of Sandy Hook -- “never again.”

Bills based on surmises and vagrant hopes rather than hard data – which will not be vetted by the relevant oversight committees before a final bill is produced – suit other purposes.

The Dovovan-Williams Jihad

Speaker of the state House Chris Donovan and President Pro Tem of the state Senate Don Williams have been closeted together discussing two bills: a jobs bill pushed by Governor Dannel Malloy that appears to have bipartisan support in the General Assembly and Mr. Donovan’s signature minimum wage bill.

Mr. Donovan, running for the U.S. Congress in Connecticut’s 5^th District, dearly wants to push his bill raising the minimum wage 50 cents over two years through the General Assembly, and to this end he announced last week that he intended to attach his bill to a budget implementer.

After meeting with Mr. Williams for a little more than an hour, Mr. Donovan appeared to be uncertain which donkey’s rear he would attach his tail to, according to a story in CTNewsJunkie.

Mr. Williams, who can count up to 36 without stumbling, is convinced he lacks the votes in the Senate to pass Mr. Donovan’s minimum wage hike, a point he pressed upon Mr. Donovan sometime before the soon to be retired Speaker conditioned passage of the jobs bill in the House upon the passage in the Senate of his signature legislation. Mr. Donovan declined to present Mr. William’s bill in the House, and both bills expired in the last session.

Mr. Malloy – unlike former Republican governor Jodi Rell, a vigorous political campaigner –could easily  throw his support to former state Representative Elizabeth Esty, the wife of Daniel Esty, the governor’s Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).

At the Democratic nominating convention, Mr. Donovan rolled over Mrs. Esty, winning the 5^thDistrict nomination by 64 percent of the vote, marshaling 216 votes to Mrs. Esty’s 66. Both Mrs. Esty and Dan Roberti, who garnered 54 votes, qualified to campaign against Mr. Donovan in a primary. The delegate count likely encouraged Mr. Donovan to continue his efforts in persuading Mr. Williams to bring up the minimum wage bill in the Senate.

The introduction into the Senate of Mr. Donovan’s bill, assuming the numbers argue against it, is a politically charged affair. There are compelling reasons to vote against the bill: Minimum wage hikes artificially increase the price of labor, and the price of labor figures in the calculations of small businesses that tend to hire minimum wage workers. Beyond a certain point, businesses operating on a slender profit margin and forced to pay what may be for them an insupportable wage will accommodate the state ordered hike in wages by cutting back on hiring those affected, mostly young people entering the job market for the first time. Businesses that cannot make the cost saving accommodations will go out of business. In the long run, these compelled choices will not invigorate business activity and job production. Should Mr. Donovan’s minimum wage bill pass, Connecticut’s minimum wage will be the highest in the nation. In the long run, Mr. Donovan’s signature minimum wage bill sends to businesses considering moving into the state and instate businesses considering expanding a message that frustrates current efforts to prime the job pump.

In the short run, minimum wage hikes are campaign boosters, a staple political product of the fevered progressive on the make. In the long run, we are all dead. The long run is for chumps; it’s the short run that gets you elected and re-elected, particularly in a one party state in which left of center Democrats depend upon unions to prime the voting pump. Caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, Democrats in the General Assembly would rather not commit themselves publically to a vote on the minimum wage bill.

At the moment, Mr. Donovan is focused on attaching his bill to some viable legislative vehicle. Using a budget implementer to ferry his minimum wage hike through the General Assembly, some Democratic legislators think, might jeopardize the more politically attractive bi-partisan jobs bill. Asked by the reporter for CTNewsJunkie whether he thought such a prospect was likely, Mr. Donovan replied, “We’re hoping to make everybody happy. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

Mr. Donovan has already loosed his moorings to the tattered remains of what some benighted traditionalists still insist on calling the Democratic Party’s moderate “vital center.” There is no center, merely epicenters colliding with each other. Mr. Donovan purports to represent the future of state Democratic Party politics, solidly union connected, firmly centered in the state’s cities, unapologetically progressive and rather impatient with the stuffy old guard of the Democratic Party.

The new dawning day needs a new vanguard. Mr. Donovan is prepared to lead. Followers will find the welcome mat put out before the door to utopia.

Donovan's Progress

Senate President Don Williams, after speaking with a number of senators concerning a bill supported by House Speaker Chris Donovan to raise the minimum wage, conveyed the disappointing news to Mr. Donovan through a text message: Mr. Donovan’s bill simply did not have enough support in the chamber to pass. Mr. Williams said he resorted to a text message, according to one report, “because he feared once senators started to leave the caucus room word would leak out.” Caucuses in both chambers of the General Assembly have been leak proof since Dannel Malloy had been elected governor.

Unused to taking bad news for an answer, Mr. Donovan, retiring this year as Speaker, supposed that members in the Senate misunderstood how his scaled down proposal of a 50 cent hike in Connecticut’s present minimum wage -- at $8.25 the fourth highest in the country -- would be seamlessly meshed with tips given waitresses and bartenders. Mr. Donovan would see to it they were furnished with the right information and, ever ebullient, said he remained confident that the Senate would take up the bill before the session ended this year.

“People said I didn’t have the votes in the House,” Mr. Donovan enthused. “We got 88 votes here.”
High minimum wage enforcements by legislatures correlate with the percentage of union workers in a state, and in this respect Connecticut also excels, rating seventh highest in the nation with a unionized workforce of 16.7%.

The resistance to Mr. Donovan’s bill, Mr. Williams said, centered on timing: “They [members of the Democratic caucus in the Senate] felt the economic times were not right. They’ve supported minimum wage increases in the past. They strongly supported the Earned Income Tax Credit last year which provides a significant boost to low-income workers.” And, of course, the Democratic majority in the General Assembly also supported a guaranteed wage increase of three percent each fiscal year for state union workers nine years out as a part of its budget package, still wretchedly out of balance, according to recent figures supplied by the state’s Democratic Comptroller.

The same Democratic Majority in the General Assembly passed without much political fallout the largest tax increase in Connecticut history, topping even the bite taken out of taxpayer’s wallets by former Maverick Governor Lowell Weicker, who bullied the income tax through a compliant Democratic majority in the General Assembly more than twenty years ago.

The same Democratic Majority in the General Assembly passed in its current session a bill abolishing the death penalty for murderers who commit heinous crimes in the future -- but not, alas, for the 11 convicted murderers currently awaiting execution, all of whom have been desperately praying for abolition -- this despite polls showing that a majority of the abolitionist’s constituents favored retention of the death penalty for the kind of depraved crimes that have so richly earned the Connecticut 11 a trip to Death Row. Some attorneys and court watchers in Connecticut have predicted that the exception in the death penalty abolition bill will be vacated by an appeal court on constitutional grounds, and ethicists have argued that the exception is morally indefensible: If the General Assembly has abolished the death penalty because enlightened legislators regard such a barbaric punishment as morally indefensible, what is the moral justification of applying a repealed law to prisoners remaining on Death Row?

The same Democratic dominated General Assembly voted to legalize medical marijuana, approved an unaffordable bus line tagged by its opponents as “the bus to nowhere,” provided nearly $1 billion in funding to save the UConn Health Center – yet again -- and, with the governor’s concurrence, shoveled millions of tax dollars into the maw of prosperous Connecticut companies as a part of Mr. Malloy’s “First Five” program.

Perhaps Mr. Williams sensed a note of exhaustion among the Democratic members of his caucus, or a fear that voters in the upcoming elections might for once take notice of the spending proclivities of his accomplices in this the age of $5 trillion dollar national budget deficits. The news that Connecticut’s budget is in the red – yet again – by about $300 million following the state’s historic tax increase bounced off Mr. Donovan’s cranium like a rubber ball off a rock.

“What we have now,” Mr. Williams said before Mr. Donovan’s bill was left on the General Assembly's cutting room floor, “are pretty challenging economic times, with employers struggling and the fact that Connecticut’s minimum wage is higher than New York, it’s higher than Massachusetts, it’s higher than Rhode Island.”

Mr. Donovan, this year running for the U.S. House in Connecticut’s 5th District, has little to fear, little knowledge about how the real economy works in the real world, and a shortage of common sense, attributes that may fit him perfectly for a lifetime of service in the U.S. Congress.

Nothing Succeeds Like Failure

Some bills offered by politicians in campaign modes are difficult to pass but worth supporting as campaign puffers. They look good, in other words, on a campaign resume: “Democratic contender for the U.S. Senate Leon Trotsky, a proletarian himself whose grandmother worked her fingers to the bone in a soul grinding mill – for slave wages, we may add -- has always favored periotic increases in the minimum wage, while Republicans, mostly grasping yacht owners, have always fancied keeping the poor on the edge of poverty.”

A bill that favors one or another preferred special interest and yet fails to pass in the legislature is not a failure -- provided it may afterwards be molded into campaign bullets and shot at political opponents. And failed bills that entail disastrous consequences are problem free when they fail, because failure decouples crippling consequences from legislation.

There are sound reasons for believing that minimum wage bills hurt the poor and affect large scale business operations not at all.

Too-big-to-fail businesses in Connecticut, some of which have already benefited through Governor Dannel Malloy’s “First Five” program, already pay salaries in excess of the minimum wage proposed this year by Speaker of the House Chris Donovan. Mr. Donovan’s bill, which raises the minimum wage in Connecticut by $1.50 over two years, will only affect companies that pay their employees a minimum wage. In some cases, the wage mandate will force employers who cannot meet the demands imposed on them by Mr. Donovan to resort to unwanted measures. Unable to afford the artificial increase in the price of labor, some employers will either increase prices to recover a loss in profit margins necessary to sustain their business, or reduce the net cost labor by letting some employees go, depending upon those who have not been laid off to take up the slack. Business hours may be cut back; expansion plans may be curtailed; profits that might have been used as seed corn for future growth will be diverted to other ends; some owners of companies may decide to pack it in and more out of state; others may hobble with a broken foot into the future until such time as they are bought out by large chain stores that can afford to pay government mandated salary increases. These are some of the consequences, none of them propitious, that might be aborted were Mr. Donovan’s bill to fail in the General Assembly.

When the Speaker of the Senate Don Williams was asked by a reporter whether Mr. Donovan’s signature bill raising the minimum wage might pass in his chamber, Mr. Williams sniffed that he had polled his caucus and the members “have a lot of questions." Even some House Democrats were cool to Mr. Donovan’s bill, as was Mr. Malloy. The Democratic dominated General Assembly had just passed a first in the nation law mandating that businesses in the state offer paid sick leave to their employees, a bill that will not affect the bottom line of large in-state businesses that already offer paid sick leave. Would Mr. Donovan’s new bill be the straw that breaks the back of business that in the past have hired new workers, helpfully placing their feet on the bottom rungs of a ladder of success the General Assembly likely would remove though Mr. Donovan’s bill?

Confronted with recent news that faltering income tax revenues have punched a $142 million dollar hole in Governor Dannel Malloy’sbudget, General Assembly Democrats may be indisposed to pass Mr. Donovan’s small business punishing bill.

Mr. Donovan, however, was of good cheer. The Speaker’s comic Panglossian optimism in the face of a lingering national recession -- the most severe, many Democrats stress, since the Great Depression – has not often been restrained by the sharp pricks of reality.

“It's always been a good bill to run on at election time,” said the ebullient 5^th District Democratic contender for the U.S. House.“That makes it good timing. And for the people who would benefit from the minimum wage, it's good timing for them, too," sort of a win, win bill that would, merely as an unintended benefit, help Mr. Donovan to win a coveted seat in the U.S. Congress.

Even if the Donovan bill fails, the effort will show well on his campaign resume.

Cowards All

Connecticut’s House of Representatives voted on April 11 to abolish the death penalty prospectively, which is another way of saying that the General Assembly will not apply its morals and its legal prescriptions to the Connecticut 11, inmates presently awaiting punishment on Death Row.

The abolition bill having passed both houses of the General Assembly, will be made operative upon Governor Dannel Malloy’s signature.

In order to make abolition palatable for wavering politicians, the leaders of the Senate responsible for passing the bill, President Pro-tem Don Williams and Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, inserted into the legislation a provision that will retain Death Row for prisoners who in the future commit heinous crimes. Death has been abolished, but Death Row lives on. In time, prisoners who have been spared death, courtesy of the moral epigones in the General Assembly, will mingle in the same general space with others sentenced to death whose crimes will be no less heinous.

The prospective abolition bill is the single most cowardly piece of legislation passed in the last half century, and it gives the lie to every argument made in the General Assembly in favor of abolition.

Here is House Majority Leader J. Brendan Sharkey fulminating, just prior to passage, that the death penalty has not eradicated evil:

"Despite having the death penalty in our society here in Connecticut for several hundred years ... it certainly hasn't eradicated evil from our society. If we as human beings created laws that reciprocate the evil that's perpetrated on society, are they really protecting us? ... Our laws more project our better selves."

But in the case of the 11 inmates awaiting execution, the bill approved by Mr. Sharkey visits upon them a reciprocal evil. And we would be no less safe, the pro-repeal forces in the General Assembly have repeatedly assured us, if the sentences of the Connecticut 11 had been commuted to life in prison retrospectively. Mr. Sharkey has yet to share with us the moral precept that justifies a penalty of death for 11 Death Row inmates who are to be executed AFTER the law authorizing execution has been abolished.

Following abolition, national president of the NAACP Benjamin Jealous said, “This vote tonight ... allows Connecticut to break with a centuries-old tradition of executing people and rejoin the rest of the Western world, which has long since cut bait with the death penalty. It also moves our nation forward." But as long as the Connecticut 11are subject to the death penalty, it cannot be said that Connecticut has “moved forward.”

Meeting in Paris in February 2007, the forward looking 3rdWorld Congress Against The Death Penalty pointedly noted that abolition was not nearly enough to satisfy the demands of justice: “We recognize that the process of abolition must be accompanied by a better consideration of the needs of victims and by an in-depth reflection on penal policy and prison systems, in the framework of an equitable and restorative justice… We demand with one voice the end throughout the world of justice that kills. No authority has the right to strike out a person’s life. We recall that the death penalty is a cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, that it is contrary to human rights, that it has no utility in the fight against crime, and that it always represents a failure of justice.”

A death penalty abolition that leaves 11 Death Row inmates subject to execution by no means satisfies the prescriptions of the Paris conference.

Every argument made in the General Assembly in support of prospective death penalty abolition, sufficient or not, applies as well to retrospective abolition. And every argument made by partisan Democrats in Connecticut in support of abolition would apply equally to the FederalDeath Penalty Abolition Act of 2011, a bill co-sponsored by 15 Democratic Representatives. Democratic contenders for congress – most especially Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, who organized support for Connecticut’s death penalty abolition bill -- should be asked in the course of their debates whether they will support the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act.

Donovan’s Minimum Wage “Compromise”

Speaker of the State House of Representatives Chris Donovan, actively running for the U.S. Congress in Connecticut’s 5th District, apparently has “compromised” on his most recent bill that would have hiked the state’s minimum wage 75 cents on July 1 and another 75 cents a year later, establishing in Connecticut, the land of steady spending habits, yet another first: the state with the highest minimum wage in the nation.

Donovan’s compromise is a bit like that of Solomon’s, who proposed that a baby whose parentage had been questioned should be cut in half with a sword, each half to be parceled out to the disputing mothers. Solomon’s inelegant solution, offered as a ploy to ferret out the real mother, would have resulted in a dead baby. Mr. Donovan – perhaps in order to demonstrate his willingness to compromise should he ever reach the U.S. House of Representatives – has now offered a more “moderate” proposal: The Labor and Public Employees Committee recently voted 8-3, with the consent of the Speaker, to trim back Mr. Donovan’s minimum wage hike. Mr. Donovan’s compromise bill raises the minimum wage by 50 cents to $8.25 in each of the next two years, future raises to be pegged automatically to the consumer price index.

With whom, it may be asked, was Mr. Donovan compromising when he shaved 25 cents off his initial minimum wage proposal and then indexed future boosts to the steady and reliable escalation in the consumer price index -- which, like taxes, always goes up and never comes down? One of the reasons the consumer price index will be going up in the post-Barrack Obama era has to do with inflation. When the national government prints too much paper money, it devalues the purchasing power of the dollar. The decrease in the purchasing power of the dollar means that it takes more dollars to buy a loaf of bread or a gallon of gas or a politician for sale. This increases the price of goods, and tying wage increases to the price of goods protects favored interests – such as union members inclined to vote for Mr. Donovan – from the ravages of inflation caused by legislative spendthrifts such as Mr. Donovan.

Most Republicans in the General Assembly, Senator Tony Guglielmo of Stafford dissenting, sincerely believe that the Donovan “compromise” will result in a dead baby. In any case, Mr. Donovan, who prefers force majeure to compromise and is a former organizer for the Service Employees International Union, has not been inclined to compromise with Republicans in the General Assembly on budget matters because, as Napoleon once pointed out to the pope of the day, the Vatican opposition to his hubristic ambition was short on battalions. The opposition to Mr. Donovan’s Solomonic decision to increase the minimum wage is more likely to come from queasy Democrats.

And why, it may be asked, are Democratic big spenders in Connecticut’s General Assembly all of a sudden queasy. Well, elections are nigh; that’s one thing. There are indications that Connecticut’s plane, headed at full speed toward the hills, will sooner or later crash into the mountain; that’s another. Governor Dannel Malloy during his first few months in office, with the concurrence of unionized state workers, levied a broad-based Matterhorn sized tax increase on pretty much everyone in the state, tapping out future income tax resources; that’s another thing. And then there’s this: With the concurrence Speaker Donovan and President of the Senate Don Williams, General Assembly Democrats progressivized the income tax, instituted a New Earned Income Tax Credit without offering offsets in welfare payments and levied a new charge on businesses, although for years spendthrift Democrats in the General Assembly have been witnessing promising entrepreneurs and businesses leeching into other states less prone to punishing regulations and taxes.

Under the progressive regime favored by Mr. Donovan, destructive increases in taxation and regulation – yet another hidden tax passed on by businesses to consumers – simply rearrange chairs on a sinking Titanic. Any artificial increase in Mr. Donovan’s minimum wage beyond the point of diminishing returns will force businesses that cannot afford the increase to a) raise prices and reduce market share in a competitive economy, b) lay off workers and compel other employees to take up the slack without proper remuneration, and c) shut down business that likely employ the low income workers Mr. Donovan hopes to enrich through legislative means.

Other Democrats running against Mr. Donovan for the coveted 5th District Congressional seat presently held by U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy have pushed themselves so far left of center during the primary that it is doubtful any of them will be able to raise reasonable objections to Mr. Donovan’s destructive bill or his candidacy for the U.S. Congress.

The Loyal Opposition

You cannot be a loyal opposition unless you are opposed to the reigning power – in Connecticut’s one party state, a General Assembly and a gubernatorial office dominated by Democrats – and are, at the same time, loyal to something other than the present regime. When Republicans in the General Assembly were frozen out of budget negotiations last fiscal year by a “notice me” governor and a Democratic legislature dominated by a single party, the Valley Forge experience forced them to become, perhaps for the first time in several decades, an authentic loyal opposition.

Republican leaders in the state Senate on February 17 published their priorities for the 2012 legislative session. Pointing out the legislature’s constitutional requirement to devote the session in even years to budgetary matters, the Republicans outlined three major goals:

•Strict adherence to the state’s constitutional spending cap;
•No new taxes; and
•No spending increases.

Highlights of the Republican proposals included:

Balancing the Budget
•No tax or spending increases and strict adherence to the constitutional spending cap
•Review of all 2011 Malloy tax hikes
•Require consensus expenditure projections, just as consensus revenues are provided
•Reduce pension liabilities through real pension reform
•Enhance fraud detection in social service programs

Economic Development and Job Creation
•Regulatory reform: moratorium on new regulations, expedited permitting, cost/benefit analysis of existing regulations
•Targeted tax relief: tax incentives for companies who purchase commercial property in CT; repeal the corporate tax surcharge; expand Learn Here Live Here; create a small business reinvestment account
•Increase the dispensing fee for independent pharmacies and eliminate the mail-order requirement in SEBAC
•Cap the gas tax
•Fund the underground storage tank program

Education Reform
•Reform teacher tenure to bring greater accountability into the classroom
•Greater resources for charter schools
•Reject the proposed mandatory regionalization that would force up to 31 small towns with fewer than 1,000 elementary school students to merge with other districts that face losing state aid.

Transparency and Accountability
•Redirect Busway resources elsewhere
•Require DOC to report outcomes related to Early Release of Prisoners
•Reconstitute the watchdog agencies

General Government Reform
•Improve response to natural disasters: centralize coordination of government efforts; performance standards for utilities; require utilities to train municipal employees in how to identify live wires
•Establish Privatization Planning Committee to develop a plan to privatize direct-care.

No one can possibly mistake the directional signals strikingly apparent in the Republican release for a Democratic Party campaign document. One imagines union supported Malloyalists choking on the last mentioned “General Government Reform” measure that privatizes rather than unionizes direct care services. Should Senate President Donald Williams be obliged to swallow that big pill, it would take a Heimlich Maneuver administered by the entire membership of SEBAC to remove it from his throat. Recently, Governor Dannel Malloy made the unionization of private day care workers more likely through executive fiat.

The loyal opposition was offering in the document released to major news outlets a laundry list of Republican Party desiderata. The response from Malloyalists was instantaneous. Mr. Malloy’s chief numbers cruncher in the Office of Policy Management said that Republicans, who for months had been arguing that Democratic budget numbers were partly fictional, had got their budget figures wrong.

It was left to Sen. President Donald Williams to offer a political assessment. Mr. Williams said that the budget process under Mr. Malloy and former Governor Jodi Rell were “like night and day.” He said the economy was improving, and that Democrats in the General Assembly at the end of the fiscal year would turn in a budget that was balanced. And, no stranger to irony and comedy, Mr. Williams said, according to a piece in CTNewsJunkie, he found it comical that Republicans now “’want to be the Bad News Bears’ when two years ago they ‘aided and abetted Rell’s $2 billion deficiency.’ Williams is referring to the mistake Rell made when she released a budget that closed a $6 billion gap, after having admitted it was $8 billion.”

One fancies that the Democrats have found their whipping post in previous pragmatic Republican governors – who, of course, had been forced by superior numbers the Democrats were able to marshal in the General Assembly to accommodate the ruling legislative regime presided over by Big Spenders such as Mr. Williams and union allied Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, now busily running for the U.S. Senate in the 5th District. Mr. Williams and Mr. Malloy have found their George W. Bush in Mrs. Rell and Mr. Rowland. As President Pro Tem of the Senate, Mr. Williams surely realizes that legislators are constitutionally responsible for final budgets.

It is true that Mrs. Rell made mistakes, as did former Governor John Rowland. But for the greater part of the time the two previous Republican governors, as well as former “Maverick” Governor Lowell Weicker, were busy accommodating Mr. Williams, Mr. Donovan and their predecessors. Those accommodations have led ineluctably to an enfeebled Republican Party and Connecticut’s present one party state.

The goals outlined by Republicans this fiscal year suggest that leaders in the party may have learned from history that those who do not learn from history will be doomed to repeat the errors of the past.

Another Pig, Another Poke

Duane Billington, a retired engineering technician and civic activist from Naples, “fought for 18 months against Jackson Laboratory's plan to expand in Florida,” according to a story in the Hartford Courant.”

Ultimately Mr. Billington was successful. Jackson Laboratory pulled up their negotiating stakes in Florida.

Governor Dannel Malloy’s chief of staff, Roy Occhiogrosso, read about the failed attempt to pitch the deal to Florida in a newspaper, evidentially shared the information with his boss, and a contingent from Connecticut was sent to Bar Harbor Maine to negotiate a deal with Jackson Laboratory administrators. The Courant story does not mention the names of members of the Connecticut contingent sent to negotiate with Jackson. The deal apparently was consummated and a letter of intent was signed between the parties.

When two members of the General Assembly, Senator Len Suzio and Senate Republican leader Leonard Fasano, asked to see the memorandum of understanding between the state and Jackson, they were sternly rebuffed. Malloy officials asserted the documents contained trade secrets that could not be disclosed to members of the General Assembly who would be asked to provide funding for the deal. The same claim was made in Florida, an overreach that some say soured the state on the deal.

Suzio has scoffed at the transparent dodge.

“I've got a business guy here who fell off his chair laughing,'' Suzio said of a colleague's reaction about trade secrets. “Why would there be any confidential information in a letter of intent? We're not asking for the disclosure of secret formulas. It's laughable.''

Many of Suzio’s questions were bridges too far; Mr. Malloy’s aggressive administration very early acquired the habit of pushing things through with minor participation on the part of the people’s representatives. Republicans in the General Assembly were simply pushed out of the way during budget negotiations.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Malloy administration has to some extent been trying to sell the Democratic dominated General Assembly a pig in a poke. The Malloy-Jackson deal, according to the Courant story, “is scheduled to come to a vote Wednesday in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Malloy is calling for the state to borrow $291 million to construct a new building on 17 acres of state-owned land at the University of Connecticut Health Center campus in Farmington and provide $99 million in research money for Jackson. The nonprofit institute is pledging to create 300 jobs within 10 years and 600 jobs within 20 years, making it slightly larger than the Florida plan in jobs and state subsidies.”

Mr. Billington certainly is not shy of reporters.

"They couldn't find a home here in Collier County or Sarasota because they don't have a product to deliver,'' Mr. Billington told a reporter. “Their business is to produce genetically altered mice for other scientists to study and use in experiments. This thing they're going into is a totally new deal for them. They have no expertise. It's an exercise in venture capitalism. It could work, and it might not.''

Jackson Laboratory has had success in genetically altering mice sold to prospective buyers in other research facilities. The Connecticut operation would break new and untested ground for Jackson, which now is seeking to move into an entirely different field, that of genomic medicine, the study of genes and genetic interactions that, according to a 26-page brochure that was distributed to Connecticut legislators, are "essential to creating new medicines and treatments for some of humankind's worst diseases and conditions.''

Mr. Billington told the Courant reporter, “We're glad to be rid of them. I feel bad for the state of Connecticut if you all have politicians who are swallowing the Jackson line hook, line and sinker.”

This is the second time the Malloy administration has asked the Democratic dominated General Assembly to swallow an unpalatable deal. Asked to vote on a budget the details of which had not been finalized in negotiations between Malloy administration officials and SEBAC, a union coalition authorized to negotiate contracts, Democratic leaders in the General Assembly persuaded their caucus to vote in favor of an unfinished budget. The leaders of the Democratic caucus, President of the Senate Don Williams and Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, apparently like the taste of hooks and lines and sinkers.

Mr. Donovan, SEBAC’s best friend in the legislature, is running for the U .S. Congress in Connecticut’s 5th District.

Since the Malloy administration enjoys an insuperable majority in the General Assembly, it does not need Republican votes to pass measures the details of which have not been adequately ventilated in public. Calls on the part of Republicans to put off the vote Wednesday until the pig in the poke – minus the trade secrets, which always may be redacted in publically disclosed documents – has been put on public view and debated fully by the General Assembly will no doubt be ignored by the Malloy administration. And the deal will go down on Wednesday, possibly with the concurrence of some Republicans in the General Assembly who have acquired a taste for hooks, lines and sinkers.

All the “buts” will not arrive until much later.

Mike Hyde, Jackson’s Vice President and fund raiser, no longer concerns himself with Mr. Billington's criticisms. "I'm delighted to be in Connecticut,” he has said. “It's a great state. I really don't have any hard feelings about what happened in Florida. This is here. This is now.”

Florida rejected Jackson’s best offer because the state is flat on its back and broke, unlike Connecticut. For now, at least, the state is flush in quickly disappearing funds owing mostly to the largest tax increase in its history imposed upon it by its “shared sacrifice” governor. This is here. This is now.

And the future? Let the future eat cake.

Greenberg Calls Upon Donovan To Quit Redistricting Committee

Mark Greenberg, a Republican running for the House in the 5th District, has called upon Chis Donovan, the Democratic Speaker of the state House running for the same seat, to step down from the redistricting commission that will recommend new borders for Connecticut’s five U.S. House of Representative districts.
The committee is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, and Mr. Donovan is the only member of the commission who will be seeking higher office.

Other members of the commission are:

Senator Martin Looney, (D, 11th District)
Representative Sandy Nafis, (D, Newington)
Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams, (D, 29th District)
Minority Leader Representative Lawrence Cafero, (R, 142nd District)
Senator Len Fasano, (R, 34th District)
Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, (R, 28th District)
Representative Arthur O'Neill, (R, 69th District)


“Chris Donovan,” Mr. Greenberg noted in a press release, “is a declared candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 5th District and his participation on the redistricting commission is as blatant a conflict of interest as I have ever seen. In fact, I’m surprised that Chris does not see this for himself.

“A declared candidate sitting on the panel that is recommending new district boundaries gives the absolute worst appearance. Our elected officials must be committed to transparent and open government. By not stepping down, Chris Donovan is engaging in the same old back-room politics and seeking an unfair political advantage. If he refuses to step down, I believe Connecticut voters will see right through his true motives.”

Perhaps. But the true motives of any legislative mover in the General Assembly are hardly transparent. Mr. Donovan – the Speaker of the State House, a position comparable in influence to President of the Senate Don Williams, both of whom steer the business of the General Assembly – is hardly an equal among equals.

In the political barnyard, George Orwell noted in his novel “Animal Farm,” everyone is equal; but the pigs are more equal. Both the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House wield more influence than any other legislative members of the Gerrymander Commission.

So inordinate is Donovan's influence in the General Assembly that at times the Speaker has overturned the gubernatorial ambitions of both Republicans and Democrats. Last June, when SEBAC and Governor Dannel Malloy were pulling budgetary taffy, the coalition of state unions having rejected the governor’s Plan A, Mr. Malloy wanted the General Assembly (read: Mr. Donovan and Mr. Williams) to pass a bill that would calculate pension payouts without including overtime pay.

The bill passed in the Senate but met grief in the House when Mr. Donovan, long a step-and-fetch-it for unions, refused to bring it up for a vote.

Much later, after Mr. Malloy touched SEBAC with his cattle prod, forcing union leaders to accede to PlanA2, the governor was asked by Hartford Courant reporter Jon Lender what should happen now with the bill in the House.
While the SEBAC-Malloy-Donovan-Williams boosted from three to five years the pension calculation method employed for new employees hired since July, tens of thousands of employees were untouched by the more severe pension calculations – until 2022, ten years down the road.

Never mind, said Mr. Malloy, overtime in the future would be reduced through better management practices. Mr. Donovan, now running for the U.S. House in the Connecticut’s 5th District, no doubt appreciated Mr. Malloy’s accommodation. Mr. Donovan will need union support to give him an edge over his competitors in the upcoming election.


The now infamous Gerrymander – a district so shaped by influential politicians to give them an advantage they might not otherwise enjoy in a (small “d”) democratic election – was named after governor of Massachusetts Elbridge Gerry, who signed a bill that redrew state election districts, one of which was so distorted that it resembled in outline a salamander.


The Gerrymander Commission should not permit Mr. Donovan, the largest and most influential pig in the legislative barnyard, to shape a district he hopes to claim in a democratic election. Mr. Donovan is the only legislative member in the above list currently running in a U.S, Senate district that may change as a result of his participation in the committee over which he will wield, by virtue of his position as House leader, an inordinate influence.


Mr. Donovan should withdraw from the commission. Failing that, he should be booted out for the following reason: The Speaker’s participation will forever taint a process that should be non-partisan, fair and un-piggy.

Actuarial Doubts

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” – Benjamin Disraeli

Actuarial figures supporting claimed budget savings in Plan A2 -- son of Plan A, a slightly revised budget that Governor Dannel Malloy months ago submitted to the General Assembly for approval -- have been called into doubt for some time.

The Malloy budget approved by the Democratic controlled General Assembly early in May, for instance, contained a savings line that could not be actuarially verified. The Malloy budget simply assumes a savings of $270 million arising from a commitment from state workers to devise ways of saving money.

When Republican leaders -- who have been successfully cut out of the budget negotiation process by Mr. Malloy and Democratic leaders in the General Assembly – questioned the assumptions that underpinned the projected savings, Malloy communications director Colleen Flanagan intemperately responded that the figures had been verified by their actuaries and they were accurate – “period!”

But there are few periods in politics, and one budget exile, House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, has now bravely questioned what Mr. Disraeli most certainly would call a damned lie.

Period? Seems more like a question mark, Mr. Cafero mused after a letter written by Malloy budget chief Ben Barnes began to circulate through the political grapevine.

Mr. Cafero noted  that “Office of Policy and Management (OPM) Secretary Ben Barnes contradicted claims that savings included in the $1.6 billion state employee union concessions package had all been verified by actuaries” in a letter Mr. Barns sent to State Senator Andrew Roraback.”

In his letter to Mr. Roraback, Mr. Barnes sought to “correct what must be a misunderstanding about Ms. Flanagan's statement.”

The review conducted by Mr. Malloy’s actuaries, Mr. Barnes wrote, centered upon “the health benefit plan design changes, and the changes to plan design and eligibility for the State Employee Retirement System (SERS)… Other savings in the agreement reflect commitments between SEBAC and the State to identify operational, contractual, and efficiency‐related savings in the areas of technology, healthcare contracting (under the terms of the existing plan of benefits), and other operational savings. These particular commitments to achieve savings were not actuarially determined, because they are not savings of an actuarial nature [Italics mine]. Nevertheless, they reflect a commitment between the State and our employees, and more importantly between the Governor and the people of Connecticut, to reduce the cost of government this year and into the future.”

Noting that Mr. Barnes “rather clearly states only two areas of the plan were verified" by Malloy hired actuaries, Mr. Cafero offers a “period” of his own: “This means two things, and they are both important: First, the governor's office has been less than factual in their wholesale assurances of actuarial reviews. Second, the question still persists - how will we achieve these projected savings, and what will we do if they can't be realized?”

The Democratic controlled General Assembly last May approved over the protestations of Republicans a budget that was dependent upon an affirmation from SEBAC, the union coalition authorized to negotiate contracts with the Malloy administration, that never materialized. State union worker rejected Plan A. Leaders of SEBAC, yielding to strong suggestions made by the Malloy administration, then unilaterally changed union by-laws to insure that a future vote would not incommode Mr. Malloy, his administration or supportive Democratic leaders in the General Assembly – principally Senate President Don Williams and Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, who recently announced he is running for the U.S. House in the 5th District.

And now, on the eve of what some consider a fixed vote, rank and file union members are poised to affirm a budget that relies on savings that cannot be verified by the General Assembly’s own Office of Fiscal Analysis.

Responding to Mr. Cafero’s concerns, Malloy senior advisor Roy Occhiogrosso was every bit as terse as Ms. Flanagan. None of Mr. Malloy’s agents can rightly be accused script deficiencies; they are always on the same page.

“Let's be honest,” Mr. Occhiogrosso retorted, “What's bothering Rep. Cafero and his Republican colleagues is that if all this comes to pass it'll be a Democratic Governor who achieves this historic restructuring of the relationship between the state and its workforce, not a Republican. It's sour grapes on their part - nothing more, nothing less.”

Period.

Democratic Caucus To Malloy – Nyet

Plan B, held out to unions then in negotiations with the Malloy administration as a spook on a stick, was a thing of shark’s teeth and vampire fangs.

Senator Edith Prague, almost always friendly to unions, warned the rank and file members who ultimately rejected the plan that brimstone would fall from the sky should Plan A be rejected and, when the plan was rejected, Ms. Prague suffered what can only be described as a political breakdown; she said union members were mad to reject a plan described by a private union leader as an offer to die for. Jonathan Pelto, the voice of unionism in Connecticut’s left leaning press, writhed in indignation and bit his fingernails to the cuticles. The leader of the Democratic caucus in the House, Speaker Chris Donovan, up to this point a declared disinterested observer in the negotiations taking place between the Malloy administration and union leaders, put off plans to announce his candidacy for U.S. Rep. in the 5th District and pledged his services as facilitator in chief in the General Assembly, along with his counterpart in the Senate, President Pro Tem Don Williams.

After the unions defied Governor Dannel Malloy by rejecting Plan A, thought by many commentators in Connecticut to be considerably more benign than the fearsome Plan B, Mr. Malloy’s union unfriendly Plan B was submitted to a union friendly Democratic caucus in the General Assembly, which proceeded to defang it.

The number of layoff threatened by Mr. Malloy were pared back; a threat to fill positions left vacant by layoffs through the privatization of state jobs did not survive the chopping block; a measure to save expenses by reducing the number of sick days accrued by state workers from 15 to 10 per year did not make the cut.

Mr. Williams’ spokesman, Derek Slap, told reporters that Mr. Malloy’s attempt to rein in spending by suspending for two years a provision in the statues that restricts the privatization of state jobs and imposes a formal process before any state service can be contracted out to a private business was hacked out of Mr. Malloy’s revised budget by General Assembly leaders who were concerned that even a temporary suspension of the provision might cause administration officials of the Malloy administration to revert to the felonious behavior that resulted in a jail term for former Governor John Rowland.

The Democratic dominated General Assembly, over vigorous protests made by Republican leaders excluded from budget negotiations, did festoon the governor with extraordinary rescission authority for a limited period. Mr. Malloy may proceed with his layoffs, later to be fine tuned by the legislature. A deal struck at the last moment  between Mr. Malloy and Democratic caucus leaders in the General Assembly allows legislators to reject from July 15 through August 30 any negotiated rescissions made by the governor.

Forbidden by union friendly Democratic leaders in the General Assembly from privatizing the jobs “lost” through layoffs, Mr. Malloy can only refill positions deemed necessary after the bloodletting has occurred by rehiring as consultants state workers he has laid off or by hiring new blood; and once one computes the payouts in pension and benefit costs owed to those laid off plus the somewhat reduced salaries and long term liabilities assumed by the state in the case of new workers, the net costs of the transaction forced upon the Mr. Malloy by leaders of the Democratic caucus in the General Assembly will still be unsupportable.

This happy news, once it sinks into the cranial matter of Ms. Prague and Mr. Pelto, should bring a spring to their step and a bloom to their pale cheeks. Bottom line: Malloy has been snookered by friends of labor in the General Assembly. A little tete a tete with departed former Governor Jodi Rell might have tipped Mr. Malloy off to what was coming round the bend at him at the speed of a new environmentally friendly bus.

It is said that -- somewhat like Lafcadio, the anti-hero of Andre Gide’s novel, “Lafcadio’s Adventures,” who stabbed himself in the thigh with a small knife whenever he did something that contradicted his much prized freedom of choice, so as not to forget the insults he was forced to bear -- Mr. Malloy has a lively memory. If so, the snookerers will have much to fear somewhere down the road; and, if not, they will have lived politically successful lives.

Donovan’s Plan C?

General Assembly Democrats – i.e. Speaker of the House Chris Donovan and Senate President Don Williams – have not decided firmly to give Governor Dannel Malloy extraordinary rescission authority to remake the state budget after the collapse of Plan A.

Repeating his offer to dominant Democrats in the legislature, Mr. Malloy has said that he would be perfectly willing to implement the dreaded Plan B should the General Assembly confer upon him what amounts to plenipotentiary powers.

But a rift has occurred within the legislature. Mr. Williams is toying with the idea; but his confederate in the House, Mr. Donovan, pleased to have stepped out of the way of the cannons when Mr. Malloy was begging state workers to accept Plan A, now seems to be puffing out his chest, welcoming the bullets.

Mr. Donovan has reminded Mr. Malloy that the General Assembly never agreed to confer upon him an expanded rescissionary authority that would allow the governor to shape the new budget without bothersome legislative interference.

Plan A was hammered out in a sweet, untroubled darkness behind closed doors, without the pointless interference of Republicans in the General Assembly, a process that won Mr. Malloy no friends among Republicans in the legislature.

Surrounded by friendly Democratic faces, Mr. Malloy had no need to romance Republicans. Mr. Malloy and the Democratic caucus rolled Plan A through the legislature without effective resistance, but now the Malloy-Williams-Donovan juggernaut hit an impenetrable wall of resistance in the form of a resolute state union.

The question before the House now is: Who rules – the Donovan caucus, the Williams caucus or Mr. Malloy?

Beyond that question lies a darker question: In politics, things happen in a certain way because prime movers have directed events, either openly or surreptitiously. And occasionally things are not what they appear to be. Successful politicians are those who can see though the public mask to the reality it obscures.

Mr. Donovan’s reassertion of legislative preeminence comes at a most inconvenient time for the besieged Mr. Malloy, whose reputation as can-do shaker and mover has suffered what ancient tragedy writers used to call "a reversal of fortune."

As the fiscal year clock ticks towards its appointed end, Mr. Malloy’s Plan B budget may easily be thrown into German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck sausage maker – which would allow union friendly forces in the General Assembly to shape a Plan C.

The new hybrid plan, some suppose, may include a further shift of “shared sacrifice” from taxpayers to tax consumers. Before Plan A collapsed, the Malloy administration dipped into a surplus to relieve state unions of carrying their previously arranged “fair share,” and it certainly is no secret that progressives in the legislature wish to shift the tax burden through the legislatures relatively new progressive income tax to those earning more than $200,000 per year. It has also been suggested that the fair share born by tax consumers may be mitigated by circumventing the state’s spending cap through means of a declaration of fiscal "exigency.”

If the time frame within which Mr. Malloy is operating is pushed beyond the end of the fiscal year, the game changes, and progressives in the legislature, even those who severely reprimanded state unions for failing to accept a beneficial deal, simply are not used to thinking in terms of cost cuts. The ways of taxation, to misquote Henry David Thoreau, almost always lead downward, especially in an economy tossed on stormy seas. The past few months have convinced some political watchers that downward is the only way progressives are willing to travel. Mr. Donovan and others may have a stronger hand in the new game.

Polls Spank Malloy

The most recent poll from the Yankee Institute shows Governor Dannel “The Vozhd” Malloy blowing bubbles below the water line.

“Voters oppose by wide margins every Malloy administration initiative tested in the survey:
• On the budget deal, 57% of voters say the new state budget agreement ‘spends too much and raises taxes too much,’ while 39% describe it as ‘about as good as could be expected given a weak economy.’
• On the labor union concessions, 49% of voters say state employee unions ‘did not give up enough and should have been asked for more,’ while 36% say ‘the unions did give up a lot.’
• By a margin of 60-30%, voters describe the $572 million New Britain busway project as ‘a bad use of taxpayer money.’
• By a margin of 56-25%, voters describe the $864 million UConn Health Center expansion as ‘a bad use of taxpayer money.’”

During the next legislative season, Mr. Malloy plans to travel about the state attempting to convince easily duped businessmen that Plan A, which includes a doubling of the corporate surcharge tax and the largest tax increases in Connecticut’s history, are good for business.

Mr. Malloy’s assault on business in Connecticut is old news to those who follow Connecticut Commentary.

The numbers on the latest Quinnipiac poll will not lighten the hearts of Malloy accolades:

“Connecticut voters give Gov. Dannel Malloy a negative 38 - 44 percent approval rating, apparently driven by 43 percent who are "dissatisfied" with the new state budget and another 16 percent who are "angry" with the budget, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Only 36 percent described themselves as ‘enthusiastic’ or ‘satisfied’ with the budget.

“Today's results compare with a negative 35 - 40 percent approval rating for Gov. Malloy in a March 9 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll.”

According to a CTMirror report, poll director Doug Schwartz said the low numbers are a reflection of how voters perceive the Malloy budget:

"'His low approval rating is a reflection of how voters feel about his budget,' said Douglas Schwartz, the poll's director. 'Many voters are dissatisfied and some even say they are angry. They think the budget relies too much on tax increases and not enough on spending cuts. They also think the middle class is paying more than its fair share while those with higher incomes aren't paying their fair share.'

"Only 17 percent say the new budget fairly spreads taxes across income groups, while 67 percent say Malloy should have sought higher taxes from people with higher incomes, a view that eroded support in his Democratic base. His tax package is viewed as fair by more Republicans (27 percent) than Democrats (10 percent) or independents (19 percent.)

"'Gov. Dannel Malloy should be doing better in a blue state like Connecticut, but he gets only a 52 percent approval rating among his base of Democrats,' Schwartz said.”

The Republican-Democratic divide may signal the beginning of a class warfare struggle between progressive Democrats and center right elements in both parties.

Having accomplished at the tail end of the flaccid administration of Governor Jodi Rell their aim of adding a progressive feature to the relatively flat Weicker income tax, progressive Democrats in the legislature such as Speaker of the House Chris Donovan and President of the Senate Don Williams have been signaling their eagerness to make the rates tax more steeply progressive. Mr. Malloy’s resistance to the effort is rooted in prudential rather than ideological predilections. But his soft resistance, moderate Democrats and Republicans fear, may easily be overcome.

Mr. Malloy’s effort's in accommodating unions has been much more energetic than his efforts to accommodate, say, Republicans, who are now being cited by Mr. Donovan for their obduracy. Even a slight resistance on the part of Republicans to the Malloy-Williams-Donovan juggernaut is bound to be characterized by Connecticut's new one party state as "extreme", a useful derogation borrowed from Sen. Charles Schumer of New York.

Of course, the Republican objections to a budget that even the left of center New York Times has characterized as “the most liberal in living memory” are hardly extreme. Since Democrats clearly have decided to use their numbers in the General Assembly to establish a progressive regime, the objections, however apposite, will most certainly fall on deaf ears. It is a considerable understatement to say of those who are willfully deaf that they do not care about objections and polls they choose to discount.

The Vozhd

The budget submitted by Governor Dannel Malloy to the Democratic dominated General Assembly and approved by the legislature – although a pending deal between Mr. Malloy and state union workers requiring union givebacks of $1.6 billion had not been affirmed by the unions at its passage – is best seen as the inevitable political end piece of the first Weicker budget.

The presumptions underlying Governor Lowell Weicker’s 1991 budget parallel Mr. Malloy’s. Indeed, the two budgets, as well as the political maneuvering involved in passing them, are nearly mirror images.

Mr. Weicker’s campaign for governor featured rather dramatic suggestions that he would not resort to an income tax to liquidate a large state debt. Similarly, Mr. Malloy several times during his campaign with Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Foley suggested that an increase in taxes would be a last resort for him.

Instituting an income tax, Mr. Weicker said at the time, “would be like pouring gas on a fire.”

Upon being elected governor, Mr. Weicker chose as his Office of Policy Management chief Bill Cibes, a pro-income tax proponent who had run for governor on an income tax platform. Mr. Cibes had been soundly defeated. Before anyone could cry “Fire” in Connecticut’s crowded political theatre, Mr. Weicker, breaking arms and shoving pencils into the eyes of wavering anti-income tax legislators, set Connecticut ablaze with a new, relatively flat income tax. Mr. Malloy did not deign to allow Republicans to shape his budget, and his tax increase was larger than Weicker’s.

Spendthrifts in the General Assembly, most but not all of them Democrats, then and there pledged to make Mr. Weicker’s income tax more progressive. A progressive feature, finally added in the waning days of the Rell administration, has been improved by the Malloy administration. Governor Jodi Rell, the last Republican governor before the advent of Mr. Malloy, lampooned as “Snow White” by her Democratic opponents and the usual cheering section of Connecticut’s left of center media, was never a match for Machiavellian Democrats in the General Assembly. Looking backward from the vantage point of the Malloy administration, Mrs. Rell may be viewed as the last Republican cork in the bottle of a once fissiparous but now united Democratic Party. Mr. Malloy is the first Democratic governor elected in the Connecticut since former Governor William O’Neill departed the state more than 20 years ago, leaving in his wake a deficit of about $1 billion. In the post income tax era, the deficit has tripled, the budget has tripled, and the total liability straddling the state is about $68 billion. All of this is the result of the inability of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing to cut spending.

“We all want progress,” C.S. Lewis said. “but of you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.”

Asked some time ago whether he feared the consequences of a one party state, Don Williams, the progressive state Senate President, retorted that such fears were overblown; the one party state gets things done.

It is not known whether Mr. Williams is a student of Italian fascism, but he clearly admires the oomph behind it as expressed in Mussolini’s definition of fascism: “Everything in the state; nothing outside the state; nothing above the state. And by “the state,” of course, the guy who made the trains run on time meant a one party governing power.

For all practical purposes, Connecticut is now a one party, progressive state – with a progressive income tax, a means of passing on the tax burden, rather than sharing it, to anyone who makes over $200,000 a year. Republicans this year exercised no influence in shaping Mr. Malloy’s union driven budget.

Following the passage of Connecticut’s budget, the New York Times, the editorial board of which is simpatico with Mr. Malloy, modestly pronounced Connecticut’s budget session “the most activist, liberal legislative session in memory.” As tokens of Mr. Malloy’s abundant liberalism, the Times mentioned that the governor worked with the General Assembly to “enact the largest tax increase in state history and approved the nation’s first law to mandate paid sick leave for some workers. The legislators voted to extend protections for transgender people, to charge in-state college tuition rates to illegal immigrants, to extend an early-release program for prisoners and to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana.”

The Sunday following the adoption of Mr. Malloy’s budget by the Democratic controlled General Assembly, The Hartford Courant, Connecticut’s only state wide newspaper, tooted the governor’s horn in an editorial, “Going The Governor's Way: One-Party Rule Empowers Malloy.”

The paper clearly admires Mr. Malloy’s force and focus, even as it admired, without much attention to the direction of such force and focus, the same qualities in Mr. Weicker. It declares that if unions agree to the rather inconsequential, temporary sacrifices Mr. Malloy has asked of them in his budget plan, the governor will have “fixed the biggest budget deficit the state ever faced,” a doubtful proposition. Connecticut’s continuing budget deficits are the result of overspending, and spending has not been aggressively attacked in the Malloy budget, which freezes the wages of state union members for two years, thereafter increasing wages by three percent for the following four years. The Malloy budget contractually forestalls layoffs for four years and restricts “shared sacrifice” only to state union members. The shared sacrifice of taxpayers under the Malloy budget will be permanent; spending giveback from unions will be temporary. The state’s largest budget deficit in history has been “fixed” mostly by relying upon the state’s biggest tax increase in history, larger even than the increase that followed Mr. Weicker’s imposition of an income tax.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley, who lost to Mr. Malloy, has not entirely disappeared. And, as might be expected, his assessment of Mr. Malloy’s “shared sacrifice,” differs markedly from the state’s left of center media. “The facts are clear and simple,” said Mr. Foley. “Spending in the general fund is budgeted to go up next fiscal year by over $450 million, an increase of 2.5 percent over this year. The governor's ‘deal’ with state workers' unions includes no reduction in either the number of state workers or the overall cost of the state workforce. Gov. Malloy and the Democratic majority are closing this entire budget deficit with increased taxes amounting to more than $2.5 billion.”

The Courant admires Mr. Malloy’s audacity:

“He's rammed through audacious projects, including a nearly $900 million expansion of the University of Connecticut Health Center that could make the state a powerhouse in bioscience research and production.”

The operative word in that last sentence is “could.” Pouring nearly a billion dollars into such a doubtful proposition as the UConn Heath Center could, as easily, be throwing good money after bad, and the health center’s record in this respect suggests that the institution may not be salvageable at any price; its had been bailed out numerous times in the past, and throwing money in its direction has been an exercise in futility.

In a time of scarce tax resources – not even the audacious Mr. Malloy can press water from stones – Mr. Malloy has proposed a budget in which the problems he has temporarily settled by a shared sacrifice that weighs heavily on tax payers and lightly on tax consumers will almost certainly recur in a more virulent form later.

One of the most glaring, unaddressed political problems facing this and preceding governors is centered in the schedules that determine contract negotiations between Connecticut’s governors and bargaining units. Union contracts expire at different dates, which shifts the negotiation advantage from the governor’s office to union negotiators. Like the weather, all Connecticut governors have complained about it, but complaints do not change the weather.

Suppose, just to suppose, that an audacious governor and an enlightened General Assembly were to arrange matters so that all state contracts were to expire on the same date and hour. In that circumstance, contract negotiations between the executive department and unions could conclude in a more timely manner, which would give to the executive and legislative departments an advantage in negotiations they do not presently enjoy. The arrangement would more easily make shared sacrifice politically possible. Under the present arrangement – this year, the Malloy administration, working in concert with Democrats in the General assembly, pre-approved the budget without the certainty of union give backs -- both the governor and the General Assembly are held hostage to a process that gives union negotiators the upper hand in determining the final shape of the state’s budget.

The telling consequences of Mr. Malloy’s focused and forceful approach to government all lie in the future. And the preeminence of legislators and governors in a democracy over union negotiators may merit serious attention as Connecticut drifts effortlessly toward Mr. William’s utopian one party state.