The Sinkhole State

In any tousle between business and government, business usually has the last word, and more often than not the word is, “We’re outta here.”

Sikorsky Aircraft, a Connecticut company of long standing, has initiated two rounds of job cuts.

Early in 2010, Sikorsky President Jeff Pino, “under marching orders to raise the division's profits,” according to a news story, boasted to stock analysts, “We've nearly tripled the amount of direct production labor hours from 2006 to 2009. And for the first time in the history of our company, more than half of our hours are outside of Connecticut. We're very proud of that because outside of Connecticut, as I told you last year, by definition is low-cost sourcing."

Having met his goal of a 10 percent profit margin in 2010, Pino presently is aiming for 14 percent by 2014.

Playing its strategy close to its vests, company officials declined to share details of the cost saving cuts with Connecticut’s Democratic congressional delegation. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, for instance, was not apprised of the details of the earlier September cuts, which included the elimination of 567 positions, 419 of which were in Connecticut. In the first round, 384 hourly members of the Teamsters union were let go.

In the current round, the company hopes to reach its goal of about 525 workers. No details of the cuts were shared with Mrs. DeLauro.

The company may be suffering from post-Attorney General Richard Blumenthal syndrome. Before he hopped to the U.S. Senate from his suit stained position as attorney general, Mr. Blumenthal intervened on behalf of union workers at Pratt&Whitney, a company that like Sikorsky operates under the aegis of United Technology (UTC), successfully if temporarily averting layoffs. Unfortunately for Mr. Blumenthal and workers in the vast beehive of United Technology, cost savings lost in one UTC company is often recovered in another.

Of UTC’s 205,000 global employees, 26,000 work in Connecticut, the majority of them at Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky and Hamilton Sundstrand. Employees at Pratt & Whitney have diminished over the past two decades from 15,000 to 3,700.

Mr. Pino is not alone in thinking that Connecticut is a forbidding place in which to do business. Last February, while speaking at a Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce breakfast, CEO of Aetna Mark Bertolini told the group, “We've done the analysis, and, quite frankly, Connecticut falls very, very low on the list as an environment to locate employees . . . in large part because of the tax structure, the cost of living, which is now approaching, all in, the cost of locating an employee in New York City.”

Rising above critics of his administration, Governor Dannel Malloy was last Thursday, according to a press release, “a featured panelist at the Bloomberg Hedge Funds Summit, where he will speak about his efforts to generate growth in the state’s financial services industry and attract new businesses and jobs to the state”– this barely week after the non-partisan Institute for Truth in Accounting (IFTA) tagged Connecticut as a “sinkhole state,” one of the five worst states in the nation:

“It is one of five states in the worst financial position in the country. According to research conducted by IFTA, while Connecticut has $29.4 billion worth of assets, only $10.1 billion are available to pay $63.4 billion of bills as they come due. IFTA's research also indicates each taxpayer's financial burden is $41,200.”

Mr. Malloy, the architect of the largest tax increase in Connecticut’s history, which included a painful income tax hike retroactive to January, has done very little to control spending, Connecticut’s most pressing problem. And even some of the governor’s putative “savings” have been costly. The state will realize virtually no savings from a budget item requiring state workers to accept a provision requiring medical exams. Workers who declined the states’ offer were to pay a penalty fee that appeared in the budget ledger as a savings. But -- big surprise! – fully 90 percent of the state workforce chose to participate in the plan, and the projected saving vanished. The Office of Fiscal Analysis continues to insist, ad infinitum, that it cannot assess savings components of the budget approved last May. The office has been advising the administration and the Democratic controlled legislature since May that lacks the requisite information to confirm that a union concession deal concocted between the Malloy administration and SEBAC officials will provide nearly $2 billion in savings over two years.

One needn’t wonder whether Mr. Malloy will make use of such data in any of his future reports to business leaders. It hardly matters. Real job producers and business entrepreneurs have already read the signs of the times. Expected cuts in defense contracts, the continuing temptation on the part of left of center legislators to increase taxes on entrepreneurial capital, the possible crack-up of the Eurozone, the increase in crippling regulations authored by former senator – now Hollywood mogul -- Chris Dodd and soon to be former U.S. House Rep. Barney Frank, the continuing housing market blow-out midwifed by the same two culprits, the never-ending bailouts of companies not permitted to go bankrupt … all this and more will punch massive holes in state and federal budgets, at which point some Greece-like states, "sinkhole states," will have no choice but to slash spending – because no one will be able to afford tax increases.

We’ve been there, done that. And we’re still broke.

The Dodd-Frank Banking Fee

According to a story in Investment.com, the $5 monthly fee bank of America intends to impose to recover losses incurred by the Dodd-Frank bill probably should be named the Dodd-Frank fee.

The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act put a limit on fees banks could collect from sellers when their customers make debit card purchases — cutting 44 cent fees to 21 cents.

“Throwing their weight around at the height of the banking crisis, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut vowed to stick it to banks. They blamed them for the mess to cover up the fact that they forced banks to lend to favored constituencies who could not repay.

“The two Democrats pushed through the much-vaunted Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which President Obama signed and touted as one of the signature accomplishments of his presidency.

“That act, which included a micromanaging amendment on fees, carried a $2.9 billion implementation cost for that alone over five years, according to the Government Accountability Office...

“The ‘economics of offering a debit card have changed with recent regulations,’ a bank spokeswoman told ABC News Friday.

“BofA says it stands to lose $2 billion from the arbitrary Durbin price-fixing amendment and now has no choice but to make up for the lost revenue some other way.”

House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Sen. Chris Dodd, once associated with the senate’s banking committee and now a gold plated Hollywood lobbyist, felt compelled to hammer banks after the mortgage industry in the United States went belly-up, largely in response to impositions imposed on them by Dodd and Frank in a successful attempt to encourage banks to lower their lending standards so that people who could not afford mortgages would be able to buy houses. Canada, which maintained standards widely observed here in the United States before Dodd and Frank began to micromanage the banking industry, has few mortage and housing problems.

Dodd also was principally responsible for undoing the last remnants of the Glass Steagall Act, a measure adopted during the enlightened administration of Franklin Roosevelt that prevented rapacious financial institutions from meddling with the bankbooks of Dodd’s constituents.

And here we are – in lowdive.

Weiner And The Etiquette Of Admission

The first rule is this: If you are going to put yourself through the trouble of admission, no qualifiers will be allowed. You cannot say, “Yes, it is true that I allowed my bachelor’s pad in Washington D.C. to be used by an acquaintance as a bordello servicing both gay and straight clients, but…

A “but” is a backdoor exit to your national humiliation and will not escape the notice of the usually soporific mainstream media, which tends to be more forgiving of so called “sins of the flesh” committed by Democrats such as U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, an out of the closet gay guy who, several years ago, provided one of his friends the opportunity to frolic with his clients in his Washington D.C. bordello. Mr. Frank was exposed by the frothing right wing media. The exposure, however, put no serious dent in the congressman’s bumper; and, after a few months, Mr. Frank was permitted to get along with his congressional business, joining former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, now a Hollywood mogul, in imposing strangling regulations on American businesses during a recession that Democrats had hoped would elide into a mini-depression, the better to save the country through FDR-like public works programs.

The second rule is this: Don’t weep, don’t cringe, and don’t drag your long suffering wife – or, in Mr. Frank’s case, partner – into your sordid affairs. If your wife, partner, paramour refuses to stand by you in your hour of trial, try to accept the rebuff with a tortured but understanding smile.

The third rule is this: If you plead guilty publicly to untoward behavior – fetchingly kicking a foot in the next stall in a men’s room, little realizing that the gent sitting on the toilet beside you is a vice cop; or producing a child out of wedlock with your mistress while running as Vice President of the United States; or confessing, better late than never, to your faithful wife that you had produced a child ten years earlier with one of the servants; or, as in the case with the much humiliated Anthony Weiner of New York, sending erotic twitters here and there, accompanied with graphic pictures – inflict upon yourself a suitable penance.

And the fourth and final rule is this: So behave in life and with others that your mom and dad, diseased or living, may not be embarrassed by your self indulgent stupidity, in this life or the next.

Mr. Weiner violated all these rules, as well as the overarching rule stressed by Mark Twain, humorist and social philosopher: A man, said Mr. Twain, may commit numerous breaches of the law and yet get away with all these, particularly if he is a politician or person of means who has in hand a good lawyer; but let a man commit one offense against convention – and he is a goner. There is no hope for him.

Proceeding backwards through the rules:

1) Considering Mr. Weiner’s public confession, it is likely that he is incapable of making the proper distinction between illegalities that may be got round and conventions that cannot be hurtled. It is true that modernity has thrown to the dogs many of the conventions that might have inhibited our parents; a certain amount of confusion may therefore be tolerated. On the other hand, Mr. Weiner is not a man easily confused and, at least in respect to conservative conventions, he has been pointedly intolerant.

2) Mr. Weiner, having confessed to his sins, refrained from imposing a suitable penance upon himself. He will not give up his office. And he has challenged such moral adepts as Nancy Pelosi to bring on the Grand Inquisitors. Go ahead, set the dogs of the House Ethics Committee upon me – just go ahead. One prominent Democrat suggested that former President Bill Clinton, who had in the past an unfortunate brush with White House convention, might have a word with Mr. Weiner and encourage his speedy exit.

3) Mr. Weiner wept, cringed and brought his innocent wife into the affair.

4) Mr. Weiner’s apology was decorated with “buts,” some subtly implied. For instance, Mr. Weiner said he had sent to a complete stranger a picture showing a bulge below his pelvis “… as a joke.” One commentator groused that he wondered whether Mr. Weiner’s wife would have considered that twitter funny. Possibly not.

Andrew Brietbart, the Publisher of Big Government who outed Mr. Weiner’s frat house behavior, has now said he possesses a picture sent by Mr. Weiner to yet another female stranger showing Mr. Weiner showing off his wiener. From delicacy and pity, Mr. Brietbart has said, he would not release the picture. But in these days of twitter and facebooks, there are WikiLeakers crouching behind every bush, waiting to waylay unconventional congressmen such as Mr. Weiner with promises of blackmail: “Halt there Weiner – your favors or your life!”

A final reason why Mr. Weiner should leave politics behind, repair his bruised marriage, and get a real job in the real world – like Mr. Dodd.

Après Rell

The estimate of the state of the state elections by Paul Bass, a writer for The New Haven Independent, is fairly accurate:

“Connecticut went true blue—bluer than ever. Malloy will have become the first Democrat to win the governor’s office since 1986. Democrat Richard Blumenthal captured an open U.S. Senate seat the party had seemed until only recently in danger of losing. And all five of the state’s U.S. House seats went to Democrats again—even though the 4th and 5th District appeared at times heading to turn red. Democrats also swept the under ticket constitutional offices.”

Departing Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz has called the gubernatorial election in favor of Dan Malloy. Two days after the election, the Associated Press, citing an 8,424 vote lead by Foley with all but 1.5 percent of precincts counted, withdrew its call of Malloy as the winner. Later in the day, the AP announced that it had missed figure in New Haven. Republicans may contest Bysiewicz’s finding in court. For someone who had been found by Connecticut’s Supreme Court to have lacked the requisite court experience to serve as attorney general, Bysiewicz certainly has been spending an inordinate amount of time on the wrong side of the bar.

Nationally, Republicans appear to have swept the boards: They won back the U.S. House of Representatives and a number of prime gubernatorial offices, but not in truer than blue Connecticut. No fewer than 19 legislative bodies switched from Democrat to Republican. Democrats have lost key chairmanships in the U.S. Congress; among the fallen is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. When Connecticut’s lock step Democratic representatives return home to the Beltway in the new session, they will find it remodeled. Republicans also picked up some seats in the U.S. Senate.

Some commentators, though not yet here in truer than blue Connecticut, are asserting that the national change – not the sort of “change” President Barack Obama approves – is a stunning repudiation of the president’s agenda. After a display of partisanship unmatched in recent times during which Democrats passed on a party line vote a massive health care bill and a smothering Dodd-Frank regulatory apparatus, it is expected that leading Democrats in the congress, their status and power much diminished, will begin in the new session to call for non-partisanship as a means to consolidate their questionable programs. Sen. Richard Blumenthal will be among them and Connecticut’s senior Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, repudiated by his own party, has given subtle hints that he may be willing to caucus with Republicans.

Change is in the air, but not here in truer than blue Connecticut, the status quo state.

A governor Malloy likely will have the same problem with the legislature as departing Gov. Jodi Rell, disappointing the state’s many left of center editorialists who supported Malloy on the assumption that birds of a feather would be able to negotiate together. Connecticut’s union owned representative, Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, and his confederate in the senate President Pro Tem Don Williams, both of whom were returned to office with large pluralities, will offer Malloy temporary spending cuts in return for permanent hikes in income tax rates on the state’s quarter-millionaires, anyone earning $250,00 per year. And if Malloy refuses to tag along, Donovan-Williams will soon let him know who the General Assembly belongs to.

But it will be worse than that. Those who have for years uninterruptedly voted in favor of the one party state Connecticut has now become will see a shift in taxing authority from municipalities, which control spending through referendums, to the state, where there are no referendums and no restraints on spending. This shift will be sold to the easily deluded among us as a “reduce the property tax” measure, while the coming tax rate increase on quarter-millionaires will offer a permanent bar to any small business considering moving to Connecticut or expanding instate.

The General Assembly’s inattention to permanent long term spending cuts will also serve as an order to quit the state for any business that can easily move its operations elsewhere. Pratt&Whitney -- despite senator-elect Richard Blumenthal’s strenuous efforts as attorney general to imprison the company instate through litigation -- is getting ready to bolt, and others will follow. If a Gov. Malloy attempts to pass through the legislature long term spending cuts, he will be met with a stiff resistance by Dovovan and Williams. Reproving editorials in Connecticut’s left of center media calling upon union owned leaders in the General Assembly to see reason and negotiate with Malloy will fall on deaf ears. It will take the Democratic dominated legislature about a year to make a Rell of Malloy, disappointing the many left of center editorialists who supported him on the assumption that a Democratic legislature would be more likely to negotiate with a governor of the same party. But at least they will get a rail line out of the new governor, enabling unemployed workers in Springfield to travel on a costly improved line to New Haven, an entrepreneurial dessert from which jobs and quarter-millionaires have fled to seek better prospects in states like North Carolina, where Pratt&Whitney’s competitor, Boeing, is in the process of breaking ground for a new aircraft manufacturing plant. Boeing is moving operations from Washington State where, it said, labor costs and unrest were unsettling.

At the end point, the curtain falls. It’s over.

Fini.

Truer Than Blue Connecticut

Paul Bass’ estimate of the state of the state election is fairly accurate:

“Connecticut went true blue—bluer than ever. Malloy will have become the first Democrat to win the governor’s office since 1986. Democrat Richard Blumenthal captured an open U.S. Senate seat the party had seemed until only recently in danger of losing. And all five of the state’s U.S. House seats went to Democrats again—even though the 4th and 5th District appeared at times heading to turn red. Democrats also swept the under ticket constitutional offices.”

While Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz has called the gubernatorial election in favor of Dan Malloy, Republicans may contest her finding in court. For someone who had been found by Connecticut’s Supreme Court to have lacked the requisite court experience to serve as attorney general, Bysiewicz certainly has been spending an inordinate amount of time in court.

Nationally, Republicans appear to have swept the boards: They won back the U.S. House of Representatives and a number of prime gubernatorial offices, but not in truer than blue Connecticut. No fewer than 19 legislative bodies switched from Democrat to Republican. Democrats have lost key chairmanships in the U.S. Congress; among the fallen is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. When Rep. John Larson returns to the House I the new session, he will find it remodeled. Republicans also picked up some seats in the U.S. Senate.

Some commentators, though not yet here in truer-than-blue Connecticut, are asserting that the national change – not the sort of change President Barack Obama approves – is a stunning repudiation of the president’s agenda. After a display of partisanship unmatched in recent times during which Democrats passed a Health Care bill and a massive Dodd-Frank regulatory Bill, it is expected that leading Democrats in the congress, their status and power much diminished, will begin in the new session to call for non-partisanship as a means to consolidate their programs. Sen. Richard Blumenthal will be among them. Connecticut’s senior Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, repudiated by his own party, has indicated that he may be willing to caucus with Republicans.

Change is in the air, but not here in truer-than-blue Connecticut, the status quo state.

Fannie, Freddie, Dodd, Blumenthal And Government Supported Entities

Even the New York Times, a publication that can hardly be accused of harboring black thoughts about the usual culprits in the U.S. Congress, referred last August in a news story to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two quasi-private business enterprises cosseted by the Democratic Congress, as “wards of the state.” Previously, each had been designated a Government Supported Entity (GSE).

In a news story – the editorial board of the Times, predictably listing left, has already predictably endorsed Connecticut’s attorney General Richard Blumenthal for Congress – reporter Gretchen Morgenson snickered that Fannie and Freddie, now become wards of the state sucking the blood from taxpayers, “got just two mentions in the 1,500-page law known as Dodd-Frank: first, when it ordered the Treasury to produce a study on ending the taxpayer-owned status of the companies and, second, in a ‘sense of the Congress’ passage stating that efforts to improve the nation’s mortgage credit system ‘would be incomplete without enactment of meaningful structural reforms’ of Fannie and Freddie.”

“Fannie and Freddie amplified the housing boom by buying mortgages from lenders, allowing them to originate even more loans. They grew into behemoths because they lobbied aggressively and played the Washington political game to a T. But after both companies bought boatloads of risky mortgages, they required a federal rescue…

“Outwardly, Fannie and Freddie wrapped themselves in the American flag and the dream of homeownership. But internally, they were relentless in their pursuit of profits from partners in the mortgage boom. One of their biggest and most steadfast collaborators was Countrywide, the subprime lending machine run by Angelo R. Mozilo.”

OhMyGod!!! as the kids sometimes say. There it is – “Countrywide,” somewhat in the news these days largely owing to an ad recently released by the Linda McMahon campaign that mentions Blumenthal, according to recent polls the heir apparent to Dodd’s seat.

The McMahon ad was put under the microscope a few days ago by Hartford Courant scrutinizers and found wanting. The ad touches an important point, gently but inadequately. The Courant misses the critical point entirely -- this point: All the so called GSEs have failed miserably. But they failed upwards – because they were Government Backed Entities. Fannie, Freddie and Countrywide were too well connected with Washington insiders to fail. In the private marketplace, failure means bankruptcy, scowling judges, ransacked investors and, at the margin, possible jail terms for CEO frauds. In a command business structure in which Washington decides what business are to succeed or fail, GSEs, underwritten by taxpayers, are resuscitated when they fail -- by taxpayers. That is what a bailout is: It involves a taxpayer infusion of funds to politically connected businesses that are too big to fail engineered by a paternalistic government committed to a command economy that has become too big to fail.

This should be the issue in all Connecticut’s congressional campaigns: How long can any administration in Washington continue to shuttle the wealth of the nation to failed enterprises before the wealth is depleted?

Angelo Mozilo, the CEO of Countrywide, it should be noted, is not in jail. A settlement was made in his case, with the energetic assistance of more than a dozen state attorneys general, Blumenthal prominent among them. The settlement having been made, Blumenthal, who should have been monitoring his settlement, was distressed, we discover from recent news reports – really distressed, and surprised too, very surprised, indeed shocked – that Mozilo’s patrons in Washington took care of Countrywide and other of its GSE co-conspirators such as the Bank of America, which purchased Countrywide’s fraudulent mortgages, by passing along the bill to taxpayers.

It turns out, after all the sleight of hand, that taxpayers who contribute to pension funds will be picking up the tab. Billing pensioners is nothing new in Connecticut where, under a Democratic regime that claims to represent the interests of teachers and firefighter and other public servants, pension funds are regularly raided by legislators and governors, while political benefactors such as John Larson and Blumenthal look the other way.

We should draw two indispensable lessons from the Countrywide-Fannie-Freddie-Bank of America affair: 1) Monopolies such as Countrywide, Fannie and Freddie cannot be formed without the willing participation of governing officials such as Dodd and Barney Frank who afford them privileges not enjoyed by their competitors in a diverse free market, and 2) Any business savvy enough to become a cosseted GSE has acquired enough friends in Congress and the Obama administration to pass along to others any comeuppance served up with great fanfare by Blumenthal and his cohorts.

Blumenthal’s response to Bank of America’s great escape from sanctions thought by Blumenthal to have been imposed on them by the attorneys general is further evidence that the people of Connecticut should vote someone other than him to send to Congress.

Is Obama A Liability?

President Barack Obama is due in Connecticut on September 16th in Stamford to raise money for U.S. Senate candidate-State Attorney General Dick Blumenthal, and Mr. Blumenthal’s office has just released a media report that the attorney general-U.S. Senate candidate will show up for the event.

Mr. Blumenthal’s statement is straightforward enough. Over a twenty year period, citizens of the state have come to expect straight-talk from Attorney General Blumenthal:

“I look forward to welcoming the President of the United States to Connecticut. It is an honor to have his support and his assistance. His visit will make a difference for us, energizing our supporters and helping us raise the resources we need against my opponent who is spending an unprecedented $50 million on her campaign.”

A carefully crafted caveat was delivered by Blumenthal spokesman Marla Romash: “Dick has always said when he agrees with the President he’ll stand with him and when he doesn’t he won’t … The bottom line here is the most important thing for Dick has always been and always will be what’s best for Connecticut.”

And what’s best for Connecticut are dollars for Dick.

The Linda McMahon campaign, rather hoping to pin Blumenthal to Obama’s increasingly truncated coattails, issued its own caveat through press spokesman Ed Patru:

“Dick Blumenthal is just another politician. He hasn’t been honest about special interest money, and he supported a partisan assault on health care that was put together behind closed doors and now is costing us all. He supports the President’s national energy tax, and he supports higher taxes on Connecticut’s small businesses. We are not going to get our economy growing again by electing more politicians who don’t get it. More of the same is just not good enough.”

Earlier in the week, former Chairman of the Democratic Party John Droney, an old time political pugilist, was asked by Dennis House on “Face the State” whether he thought it was a good idea to invite Obama to Connecticut to campaign for Democrats. With refreshing honesty, Mr. Droney -- subbing on the program for the party’s semi-invisible chairwoman Nancy DiNardo – replied he did not think that would be helpful. Using Mr. Obama as a dollar magnet for Democratic candidates was, on the other hand, a horse of a different color.

There was a day when Mr. Obama could be relied upon to sent a chill up the leg of Chris Mathews, the formidable host of MSNBC’s “Hardball,” but this was during a campaign in which Mr. Obama, glancing nervously over his shoulder at Hillary Clinton, steered his ship towards a more moderate center, except on some few vote churning issues such as bringing troops home from the war in Iraq by the Spring of 2008, closing down GITMO weeks into his presidency and promising to devote quality time in the oval office to bringing in Osama bin Ladin -- dead or alive.

Since having been elected president, the national economy, perversely refusing to respond to Mr. Obama’s stimulus packages, continues to steam, full speed ahead, towards economic sand bars; the nation’s Gross National Product is heading for the cemetery; GITMO is still open for business; the war in Afghanistan, a collection of tribes sometime called the “graveyard of empires,” is proceeding apace; terrorists whose names no one can pronounce are being tried in military courts; the post-terrorist security apparatus in the United States continues to threaten the liberties of non-terrorist citizens; the trial in New York city of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9-11, has been derailed; Iran’s nuclear machinery, fine tuned both by China and Russia, will soon be fully functioning; the Democratic controlled U.S. Congress has passed, over the strenuous objections of minority Republicans, two massive spending programs; the Frankensteinian Dodd-Frank bill regulates many untidy corners of the economy but leaves Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, the chief culprits of the Bush era economic collapse, unmarred by the Dodd-Frank regulatory deep sea squid.

Mr. Droney, and some few other concerned centrist Democrats, are necessarily queasy about all this.

The good news is that while perambulating around Waterbury (unemployment rate 14.4 percent), New Britain (13 percent) and Torrington (11 percent), knocking on doors and talking to non-millionaires in Connecticut’s 5th District, Democratic U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy has discovered “anecdotal signs” that the economy is recovering and that the Obama’s stimulus, “an appropriate blend of tax cuts and stimulus spending,” part of a larger vision in his party’s recovery strategy, has worked its magic.


Mr. Murphy’s Republican opponent, Sam Caliguiri, cool to Mr. Murphy’s anecdotal evidence, is convinced that his opponent, unable to read the signs of the times, has kissed reality goodbye.

While Mr. Murphy has not asked the president to campaign for him, he told the Housatonic Times, “I’d welcome him to come to Connecticut. It would be a great opportunity to focus national attention on the challenges people are facing in this tough economy.”

Republicans are likely to agree.

Letters, We Get Letters, Larson to Dems – Be Bold

Democratic leaders in the U.S. House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Caucus Chairman John Larson, have sent out to their troops a memo that outlines the general defense House members will be using during the election season to deflect impertinent charges from their Republicans opponents.

The memo is about two pages long, considerably less than the 2,319 page Dodd-Frank Bill that reorganizes American enterprise or the 1,990 page Health Care Bill that, for the first time in U.S. history, compels young American citizens to purchase a product, health insurance, they may not want or need. Given the brevity of the letter, Connecticut’s Democratic U.S. congressional delegation might even read it. Most congresspersons, including the issuers of the memo, neglected to read either the Health Care or the Dodd-Frank bill in it’s entirety, and Pelosi famously quipped about one or the other or both of them that they would have to be passed so that House members who voted for them would know what’s in them.

The campaign to-do memo is recorded below for posterity:

July 30, 2010

Dear Democratic Colleague:

Now it is time to define the choice America faces. We are moving America forward, not back.

You have worked tirelessly for 19 months to move America forward, begin to restore Main Street values, and create jobs here at home. We are on track to create more net new jobs this year than President Bush created over his entire eight-year term. Our advocacy for Americans who work for a living— in the face of relentless opposition by Wall Street and the big bankers, Big Oil, and the health insurance industry— has defined our Caucus.
We will move America forward in a New Direction, toward a more broadly shared prosperity—investing in America’s small businesses, clean energy jobs, and middle-class families. We will revitalize a manufacturing base that shrunk by 4.6 million American jobs under the last Administration—because when we Make it in America, we lead the world. And we will bring down our deficit by putting Americans back to work and making the difficult decisions that were deferred over the last decade.

We are not going back to the same failed Bush policies that cost us more than 8 million jobs—and threatened to destroy 8 million more without our intervention, according to independent economists. We are not going back to failed policies that exploded our deficit in order to give tax breaks to those who don’t need them—and those whose recklessness caused the mess we are in.

Americans living paycheck to paycheck—or without a paycheck—can’t afford to go back.

We must use the coming weeks to make this choice crystal clear. The President will be leading the charge. We want the power of all of our voices to convey these messages, so we ask you to plan public events and media interactions in your district around weekly themes—if they work for you. We will be driving these messages at the national level.

August 2—Fighting For The Middle Class: “Make it in America” Week

We are wrapping up a Congressional work period with a series of bills to promote a Make it in America manufacturing revival. Members can also highlight Recovery Act jobs in your districts. Republicans in Congress have sided incessantly with big corporations shipping jobs overseas and Wall Street bankers who helped cause the meltdown.

August 9 – Fighting for the Middle Class: Protecting Social Security Week

The 75th anniversary of Social Security is August 14. Members can highlight how, once again, this bedrock promise is under assault from Congressional Republicans seeking to privatize and cut Social Security that Americans have earned. Democrats will protect and strengthen Social Security.

August 16 – Fighting for the Middle Class: Consumer Protection Week

As students head back to college and families head out for back-to-school shopping, it’s a good time to highlight the strong consumer protections enacted by this Congress. Republicans sided with the Big Banks over students when we made college more affordable. Republicans fought a first-ever consumer protection agency and split over a Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights. And as we continue the drumbeat on the Patient’s Bill of Rights giving Americans and their doctors control over their health care, Republicans would repeal long overdue protections for Americans if they get sick or have a pre-existing condition.

August 23—Fighting for the Middle Class: Small Business Week

Our economic recovery must be powered by small businesses. This Congress has enacted 8 separate tax cuts for small businesses, made health insurance more affordable, and fought to get credit flowing—time and again, over Republican opposition. This week, Senate Republicans moved to block billions of dollars of private-sector lending for small businesses.

August 30—Troops & Veterans Week

Since 2007, a Democratic-led Congress has made historic investments in services for our veterans. After eight years of insufficient support under Republicans, since 2007, we have increased funding for veterans health care and benefits by 70 percent, providing over 10,000 new claims processors to reduce case backlogs, 3,389 doctors, 14,316 nurses, 145 community-based outpatient clinics, and 92 new vet centers. We have improved troop pay and equipment, and improved conditions for military families. Around the August 31st deadline to get combat troops out of Iraq, Members can focus on the promise being kept.

September 6—Fighting for the Middle Class: “Make it in America”

In September, we will keep working on legislation to rebuild American manufacturing and make America the world’s leader in innovative technologies, after a decade of damage to our economy. Members can highlight our top priority—creating jobs here in America— as we head back for the next work period.

Please find enclosed two pocket cards to help you deliver this message. The first is our main argument, Moving America Forward, Not Back; and the second is Protecting Social Security at 75 Years. You should have already received a pocket card on Make it in America, our manufacturing strategy; as well as our message on national security.

Thank you for your service, for your leadership, and for representing working Americans in some of the most important debates of our era. Please have a productive and pleasant District Work Period. We look forward to seeing you, in your districts and in September.

Best regards,
Nancy Pelosi
Speaker
Steny Hoyer
Majority Leader
James E. Clyburn
Majority Whip
John Larson

In addition to the memo, Larson is sending around a to-do card that might fit snugly into a wallet or purse, so that Democrats on the campaign trail can whip it out if ever they are asked a pointed question by Rick Green – which is not too likely.

The memo reads:

Be Bold, be bold, but not too bold
Lest the marrow of thy bones run cold

Green, in the meanwhile, had jumped the turnstile so that he might register for the primaries as a Republican and vote for Ross Garber as attorney general, thus calling upon his head the curses of his entire family, but for his grandfather, who had a grudge for some reason against the sainted Franklin Roosevelt.

Responding to this traitorous abandonment of his party, one imagines a stalwart Democrat whose ancestors did vote for FDR responding: “Someone lock the barn door before this horses’ ass gets a chance to sneak back in,” the beer infused anti-Green Democrat drinking to the health of departing U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd and praising God for having gerrymandered Larson's 1st District.

“Long may Larson wave."