Connecticut's Tax And Spend See-Saw

Governor Dannel Malloy has a rough and tumble personality. Even his friends and political associates acknowledge that he has “sharp elbows,” but one of Connecticut’s prominent public pulse takers, director of the Quinnipiac University poll Douglas Schwartz, notes that there are more important issues in elections than likeability: “…the economy is clearly the most important issue in this year's governor’s election.”

Romney-bitten Republicans have heard this one before. Former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign was all about the economy, stupid. President Barack Obama version of economic ills was highly bowdlerized, and well-padded with what frightened Republicans call “social issues.” Republicans – especially in Connecticut, where the party is awash in “fiscal conservatives” – consistently retreat with their pants on fire from social issues, leaving the field entirely to Democrats, with predictable results.

 The economy is a broad and touchy subject and, like a porcupine, full of sharp quills. Incumbent chief executives who during the course of their term in office have had ample opportunity to devise and implement solutions to a sluggish economy will insist that any continuing sluggishness is due primarily to the ineptitude of their predecessors. They are not always as quick to note that their predecessors also are responsible for the good fruits incumbents invariably attribute to themselves. But that’s politics, and a savvy politician who cannot shuck off on those preceding him the troubles for which he is responsible -- while at the same time taking credit, Chanticleer-like, for the rising of the morning sun -- perhaps ought to be selling used cars.

Some solutions to chronic debt work, others don’t. On Election Day, November 4, 2014, Connecticut voters will have had the advantage of monitoring for four years Mr. Malloy’s solutions to an anemic economy. The chief solution Mr. Malloy hit upon during his first term is not very different from that of one of his gubernatorial predecessors whom he has declined to swipe with his sharp elbows.

In response to a massive debt in 1991, Mr. Weicker pushed through the General Assembly an income tax bill that raised the revenue ceiling to meet a debt caused by improvident spending and in so doing forever changed the economic posture of Connecticut. Mr. Malloy, facing an almost identical debt, pushed through the Democratic dominated General Assembly the largest tax increase in state history. Despite Mr. Malloy’s tax hike, whoever is elected governor in 2014 will be facing a debt comparable to that faced by Mr. Weicker a quarter century ago. Debt-wise, we are back at square one.

What reasonable deductions may be drawn from Connecticut’s recent economic history? There are several.

Spending is tied inextricably to tax increases: As taxes increase, spending increases. And this is why tax increases are not an effective solution to debt, which is caused by spending and can be reduced in the long term only by spending cuts.

A tax increase – better still, borrowing, which shifts debt payments forward to children yet unborn -- may be an efficient means of meeting an immediate debt, but the unintended consequences of tax increases are, to put it mildly, destructive to the economy for a host of reasons.

Tax increases are economic disincentives. The money taken from a person or company in taxes must be replaced somehow if the person or company, suffering the consequences of a continuing economic slowdown, is to maintain a precarious status quo. Faced with a prospective deficit, persons and companies do the same thing that government should do to maintain equilibrium: They cut spending or they attempt somehow to increase their incoming revenue. A person who cannot afford to pay additional taxes might get another job, always a difficult chore in a stagnant economy. A business seeking to maintain its income stream might lay off workers, dip into its R&D reserves, raise the price of its goods or services, if possible, or move its operations elsewhere. Then too, every dollar removed from the private to the public market place is a dollar that cannot be spent by a person whose prudent spending may stimulate the economy, or a company that otherwise might have used the dollar to increase the real wealth of the state, thus increasing the total revenue available to the state to discharge its own debts. The less disposable income people have, the more difficult it will be to raise revenue. The more revenue a state has at its disposal, the less inclined it will be to govern its own ferocious inclination to spend tax monies.

“Them that’s got shall get; them that ain’t shall loose” applies as well to governments as to the unrepentant rich.  

Before she tucked her gubernatorial campaign to bed, Martha Dean raised a point in her stump speech that was both an eye opener and a reliable applause line: “People in Connecticut are finished. They’re done.” Ms. Dean meant – it is no longer possible to raise taxes to meet a deficit. After boosting taxes to satisfy appropriations that had tripled within the space of four governors, the revenue well has now gone dry. There is no more juice in the lemon. If you raise taxes on people, their own budgets will be pushed into the red. If you raise taxes on companies, they will move to secure the profitability of their operations. It’s over – done – fini. You can’t make lemonade from a lemon peel.

Flashback – 1988. Democrats, who have controlled and shaped Connecticut’s budgets for a half century, have just pushed through a budget that calls for neither tax increases nor budget cuts. Mourning the passing of budget surpluses, Governor William O’Neill, considered a fiscal conservative, never-the-less stresses the need for spending increases, which will be paid out of the state’s “rainy day fund.”

Republicans grouse that Democrats have depleted a fund that was to be used for emergencies only. House Minority Leader Robert G. Jaekle, the New York Times reported, rose in opposition to the measure: ''It's a very dishonest budget, and I'm very disappointed,'' Mr. Jaekle said.

Senate President pro tem John B. Larson of East Hartford responded, ''I think 11 percent [increase in spending] is justified. That's why we have a rainy day fund, so we can offset potential problems.”

From there, Democrats moved the budget forward. Mr. O’Neill’s 1988 budget was $6.8 billion.

And now?

A comparison of Connecticut taxes and expenditures with contiguous states shows:

Revenue sources in the general fund, FY 2013 ($ in millions)[7]
State	Sales tax	Personal income tax	Corporate income tax	Gaming tax	Other taxes and fees	Total	Per capita revenue**
Connecticut	$3,857	$8,719	$742	$612	$5,437	$19,366	$5,385.31
Maine	$1,034	$1,495	$171	$0	$351	$3,051	$2,296.92
Massachusetts	$5,164	$12,831	$1,822	$0	$7,352	$27,169	$4,059.42
New Hampshire	$0	$0	$552	$3	$1,728	$2,283	$1,725.03
Rhode Island	$873	$1,075	$137	$1	$1,238	$3,324	$3,161.17
Per capita figures are calculated by taking the state's total revenues and dividing by the number of state residents according to United States Census estimates for 2013.[8] Source: National Association of State Budget Officers

According to a January 2014 report by the nonprofit organization State Budget Solutions, Connecticut had a state debt of over $112 billion. Its state debt per capita was $31,298. The report revealed that state governments faced a combined $5.1 trillion in debt, 33 percent of annual gross state product. The obligation amounts to $16,178 per capita in the nation. A bulk of the state debt -- 79 percent -- was linked to unfunded public pensions.

Such are the very expensive fruits of progressivism and one party government.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Republicans On The Run

The state Democratic Party, much wealthier than the state Republican Party, is now spending some of its dollars on imported gunslingers such as James Hallinan, a political hessian hired by party central to throw mud at Republican candidates for governor, a certain sign that the election season is upon us.  Democrats in Connecticut hold all the state’s constitutional offices, have veto proof majorities in the General Assembly, and presently have in their campaign coffers 14 times more cash than Republicans.

Some of the mudslinging has backfired. Even a few liberal commentators have winced at the slops that regularly cross their news desks but, as Cardinal John Henry Newman once said, “Throw enough mud and some will stick – stick but not stain.”

Governor Dannel Malloy’s low rating in the polls, some commentators have noted, may give Republicans an opportunity to win back the governorship, last held by Jodi Rell, Mr. Malloy’s polar opposite. Mr. Malloy is a pro-union, left of center politician; Mrs. Rell, a creature of the legislature, was a moderate Republican of a kind that once held office in most of New England, the land that conservatism forgot. Barry Goldwater, the Will Rogers of the modern conservative movement, used to say, “If you cut off New England and California, you’ve got a pretty good country.”

For reasons not yet explored by any of New England’s major research institutions, the moderate Republican in New England has become something of a vanishing species. In Connecticut, the species is as extinct as the Dodo bird. All the members of Connecticut U.S. Congressional delegation are left of center progressives, some more brash than others. U.S. Senator Chris Murphy shouts his progressivism from the rooftops, but then he is likely to moderate his tone when he next faces voters in three years. U.S. Representative Jim Himes is more discreet; he travels among progressives with his ideology tucked into the breast pocket of his expensive looking suit. Hip U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro is fearless, as anyone would be in a district that has not elected a Republican to the U.S. House in more than 30 years; ditto U.S. Representative John Larson of the gerrymandered 1st District, last held by a Republican nearly 60 years ago.

Whatever may be ailing the Republican Party in Connecticut, its losses cannot be attributed to conservative incumbents. There are none, though there is little doubt that Democrats running for office in 2014 will be banging the drums loudly against fictitious conservative threats and Tea Party “extremists,” northern Republicans clinging desperately to their guns, their wallets and their bibles – that sort of thing. The 2014 Democratic campaign script, however fantastic its claims, has already been written, much of it in Washington D.C. and Chicago, where President Barack Obama’s former campaign script writers hold court. Chicago is the murder capital of the United States, and the Democratic Party War Room in Washington D.C. is party central for propaganda that will be picked up by state parties.

Political reality in Connecticut is quite different than in other parts of the country. Here in the land of steady progressive habits, the Democratic Party has almost completely routed Republicans, especially in large, one-party cities such as New Haven, which this year had the distinction of electing as mayor a Democratic Party fixture whose husband, now diseased, was the top tax scofflaw in the city over which his wife, Toni Harp, now presides.

Speeding her plow in a Democratic primary were the usual notables: Governor Dannel Malloy, author of the largest tax increase in Connecticut history, U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, for more than 20 years a crusading Attorney General who, in his former position, used to scowl fiercely at folk who avoided paying their fair share of taxes, and U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, the National Rifle Association’s bête noir.

In one party states, politicians working the media get to choose not only their friends but their enemies as well – and never mind that the “enemy” is largely a Potemkin Village fiction. The Tea Party in Connecticut presents a greater threat to RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) than to progressive Democrats. And for this reason, they can be safely attacked by incumbent Democrats who never met a constitutional bulwark they could not leap over. Economic conservatives among Republican campaigners become poorer than Democrats in direct proportion to their defense of rational budgets, spending cuts and appeals to the self-interests of entrepreneurial wealth producers. This is an arc that has been visible over skies in Connecticut for more than 50 years.

Is it not a wonder that only a handful of reporters, editors and commentators in the state have noticed the debt pots at each end of the progressive rainbow? When, at the end of the downward plunge, Connecticut inevitably becomes the Venezuela of New England – Crumbling Venezuela was once considered the Paris of Latin America, but not even Paris is Paris anymore – those rooted in the rubble may well ask the tribunes of the people, “Why did you not warn us of the impending disaster?”

McEnroe, A Thousand Laughs

One of the problems with columns written by humorists is that they may be taken seriously when they are intended as humor or – worse – they may be taken humorously when they are intended to be taken seriously. This was the curse that followed Mark Twain to the end of his days.

So too with Mr. McEnroe. “Give me the right guy,” he has said , “and I’ll vote GOP for once.”

Mr. McEnroe’s humor rests, like a coiled snake, in that “for once.” Has he ever voted for a Republican?

Not likely. Let the word go round at the Hartford Courant that any of its columnists voted Republican, and they would never survive the shattering laughter that would greet them when they sit down at their keyboards to advise Republicans who they ought to nominate to run against, say, U.S. Representative John Larson in the 1^st District, or Rosa DeLauro in the 3^rd District, both of whom are certain to die in office, Ms. DeLauro dressed as a 1930’s flapper, hip to the last.

Mr. McEnroe goes on to list the “wrong” guys: Tom Foley for governor; Mark Greenberg for the Congressional 5^th District; Martha Dean for…  well, anything at all.

Perhaps the Republican GOP should take Mr. McEnroe at his word and offer him an opportunity to run on the Republican ticket in the 1^st District against Mr. Larson. Mr. McEnroe, of a certainty, would be the “right guy” and someone on the GOP ticket he could vote for – “for once.”

Here is the ticklish question: Supposing Mr. McEnroe were to accept the GOP offer to run against Mr. Larson, how many votes would he garner from the editors and columnists and reporters at the Hartford Courant?

He should not be hasty in answering the question.

Years ago, when Barbara Kennelly held the seat, the sacrificial offering put up by the GOP was a very sweet, intelligent engineer who worked for Combustion Engineering, which went out of business after Connecticut became impatient with nuclear producers.

One day, the hapless GOP challenger called and lamented that he was not being covered properly by Connecticut’s left of center media, and could I do a few columns on his effort to overthrow the daughter of Connecticut’s last Democratic Party boss?

Of course I could – and did. He turned out to be a very respectable candidate. But the 1^st District was then, as it is now, an unassailable Democratic fortress. He lost. But that was not what grieved him. What busted him up was that Combustion had given more money in campaign contributions to Mrs. Kennelly than to him -- a faithful employee of Combustion.

I wrote a last commiserating column that said, “If the Democratic Party were to run a fire hydrant in the 1^st District and the GOP were to run God, the hydrant would undoubtedly win.” Ms. Kennelly’s communications’ director was not amused.

The GOP should seriously make Mr. McEnroe an offer and run him against Mr. Larson. Everyone would benefit from the arraignment: Mr. McEnroe would – "for once" – be able to vote for a Republican acceptable to him; the campaign would produce a thousand laughs, and the GOP would lose nothing in the venture they would not have lost had they run Martha Dean or God in the First District. 

Some Advice For The Loyal Opposition

In the course of writing political columns, a bad habit I’ve been nurturing for more than 30 years, people have sometimes ask me, with a note of desperation in their voice, will things in Connecticut ever change? These people generally are either conservatives or libertarians and therefore immune to the usual political nonsense. The Democratic Party has been in charge of the state roughly since the Mesozoic Era. Will we ever sniff change in the air, they wonder?

It’s a serious question: What will it take to shake people in Connecticut from their lethargy – to wake them up before the plane we’re all traveling in finally crashes into the mountain?

We’re perilously close to that. Only a month ago, the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA) released its 12th annual survey of businesses in the state, and the news was bleak. The organization surveyed 377 in state companies and found that 82 percent had a negative or somewhat negative opinion of Connecticut as a place to do business. Only 11 percent of in state businesses said Connecticut was a somewhat or very positive place to do business.

Here are some points that the loyal opposition Republican Party might consider:

1) The ground game has to change. You can’t go to war with an army you don’t have. Democrats outnumber Republicans in the state by a 2-1 margin and, as we all know, the state is gerrymandered, an incumbent protection racket. The chance of John Larson losing his seat in the 1^st District is about the same as the chance that Governor Dannel Malloy will kiss unions goodbye and begin seriously to attack the chief problem in the state he is mismanaging – which is overspending.

Democrats now own the gubernatorial office and both houses of the General Assembly. So, in the absence of a third party – the dream of starry-eyed revolutionists – the Republican Party, the sometimes too loyal to the opposition party, must come together around some politically popular points and kiss goodbye in their campaigns to the usual campaign strategy. We all know what that is: Run as a moderate and lose.

As a political animal, the Republican moderate, a vanishing species in all of New England, is someone who strides the principles of both the left and the right. It’s difficult to do this and maintain credibility among people who are looking for what I've called many times in many columns “authenticity.” Then too, when the plane is on the point of hitting the mountain, you want to raise a lucid shout, not a muffled moderate cry.

During the days of Charles Lamb, the best social critic and essayist of his day (1775-1834), a woman wrote a poem called “Love Is Enough,” and it was reviewed by Lamb in a single line – I’m quoting: “No, it isn't.” Someone should tell the Republicans that the economy is not enough to get you elected. It just isn't. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney made the economy the central pillar of his campaign. President Barrack Obama, the Samson of the Democratic Party, soon pulled the roof down on his head. Lesson: With the right accomplished populist – someone who, for purposes of election rather than governing, can fashion a new and, one hopes, temporary coalition -- social issues can trump economic issues. Republicans in Connecticut will either take the lesson, or they’ll take the beating. They need some social issue arrows in their quivers.

2) It’s the spending, stupid. When Republicans made jobs – or rather the lack of them – the central, and some would say the ONLY, pillar of their campaigns, Democrats in the shadows were smiling like Cheshire cats. These were progressives, and progressives have had an answer to joblessness ever since progressivism spilled out of the speeches of Teddy Roosevelt during the 1912 presidential campaign. Most presidents, from TR’s second presidential campaign onward through FDR The Magnificent, were progressives, Cal Coolidge standing out as the most striking exception.

And the progressives have an answer to joblessness. Roughly, the answer is this: “So you want jobs do you? Well, you just wait right here in the antechamber and I’ll manufacture some for you. There’s a room in the executive office building, adjacent to the money tree room, where we grow jobs. Hang on, I’ll be right back.” Mr. Malloy's metastasizing “First Five” program is a practical elaboration of the progressive view on job creation, which is that new jobs are best created by political chief executives responding to political cues rather than by entrepreneurs responding to market demands.

We all know that’s not a solution that works; in fact, this prescription makes the illness considerably worse. But it is a popular delusion borrowed from the prairie populists of the early post-Civil War period who later were displaced by the progressives. On the other hand, progressives have no neat response to the conservative chief executive who cuts spending and ushers in years of robust economic growth, as did Cal Coolidge when he assumed the presidency. Here’s a modest suggestion: Move spending cuts from the back to the front burner of your campaign.

3) Don’t give up on the cities. In a very important sense, the major large cities in Connecticut are the canaries in the progressive minefield. You would never know it from the non-existent Republican campaigns in Hartford, Bridgeport or New Haven – Why would you? – that the Democratic Party in the state has simply given up on the urban poor -- who are now locked into state assisted poverty. The three cities I've mentioned have for decades been Democratic fiefdoms, one party towns; the state itself is becoming a one party operation. Many families in urban areas are irretrievably broken; gangs are rampant; the prisons in Connecticut are full of biological fathers who never married the mothers of their children; a “good education” in some of Connecticut’s larger cities is a laughable oxymoron. And yet, year after year, unchallenged Democratic politicians in these cities have consistently been voted into office.  The Republican retreat from Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford appears to be permanent. Life in Hartford may offer us a foretaste of life in Connecticut: This is what happens in one party towns – and states. Political corruption occurs in states when the principal political actors are certain that they are invisible. And nothing is more invisible than a political actor operating in a one party environment. Suggestion: Bring these political actors out of the shadows. In your campaigns, talk about the bitter fruits of the one party state or municipality, and don’t assume that a conservative urban mission will fail.

4) Focus on the three M’s. There are three indispensable elements in politics. I like to call them the three “M’s” – Mission, Message and Money.  The increasingly progressive Democratic Party mission in Connecticut, and elsewhere, is not a new project. Mr. Obama’s “change” is a throwback to the 1912 presidential campaign. The mission of progressives is, and always has been, to fold what Edmund Burke used to call the “little platoons of democracy” into what progressives regard as an omni-competent and, inevitably, an omni-present state apparatus. This is the dream of the post-Republican Roman Empire -- before the fall. It is also the nightmare of the 20^th century in three of its evocations: Stalin, Hitler and Mao.

The mission of the Republican Party should be just the opposite: to advance policies that encourage the maintenance of competing social institutions, not the least of which are the family, the church, social and business associations, small self-directed businesses unencumbered as much as possible by “helpful” federal regulations, an educational system that educates, and people who are, as much as possible, free in our once glorious Republic to be their potty old selves.

The message of the Democratic Party is that the way to utopia lies through statism and the Democratic Party. The message of the Republican Party should be that utopias are the disturbing death-rattles in the chests of authoritarian regimes, most of which have been spectacular failures.

And finally, the last “M” – money.  At some point in the coming campaigns, a politician who has caught your fancy will put the touch on you: He’ll be asking you for your money or your time -- perhaps both. Give him both if you can. One’s time, one’s life, is not unimportant in the political struggle for existence. Henry David Thoreau use to say: If a robber approaches me, sticks his gun in my ribs and demands “Your money or your life,” why should I be so anxious to give him my money? The oblique Thoreauian point is that time is often a more precious commodity than money.

The challenge that Sam Adams, justly called during his own day “The Father of the American Revolution,” put before his countrymen still rages like fire in the blood of Americans. This stirring Adams quote is featured on the masthead of Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes From A blue State:

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

Words to live by.

5) Leave utopia to the utopians. No one, C.S. Lewis observes, has ever invented a new primary color. We use the primary colors we have to create the picture we need. We should not want to make the world over. Leave that exhausting and fruitless pursuit to the crazed utopians. What we should want is a politics of limits that gives birth to liberty and ingenuity. The United States, at its founding, leaped into the future from the premise that men and women were bound by limits, by the laws of God, nature and man.

We have drifted very far in the course of more than two centuries from that lodestone of liberty. And we must find a way to return, perhaps through something resembling an American renaissance, to the paths made for us by others that will lead us to a bright and prosperous future. We are custodians not creators of liberty. A state, like a person, is not a tabula rasa, a clean sheet upon which you may write whatever pleases you. Connecticut has a character, and if you wish to operate here for the benefit of the state and its people, you must work within its character frame – to FREE men and women so that, once free, they will be able to contribute to the life of our state. That is the primary task that lies before everyone in Connecticut. And in this invigorating contest of freedom, if you love wealth and the tranquility of servitude more than liberty, you run the risk that the future will forget that ye were our countrymen.

Connecticut s Fiscal Cliff

Newly re-elected U.S. Representative Jim Himes, a moderate Democrat operating out of Connecticut’s 4^th District, has said concerning the nation’s so called fiscal cliff, “Washington understands how severe the consequences of the fiscal cliff are. When I saw House Speaker (John) Boehner speak two days ago, I thought he was conciliatory and traced the outlines of a deal."

Of course, the perceived severity of fiscal cliffs depends to some extent on one’s political vulnerability. Not all severity is created equal, and Democrats ensconced in Connecticut’s safe districts, such as U.S. Representatives John Larson and Rosa DeLauro, are apt to confront the fiscal cliff with less trepidation than Mr. Himes.

A recent study conducted by the Defense Technology Initiative should serve the members of Connecticut’s all Democratic Congressional delegation as a splash of cold water in the face. The study presents a sobering picture of Connecticut’s own fiscal cliff that should give vertigo to all freethinking and rational politicians in the state.

We learn that the amount of defense contracting in Connecticut has increased by 51 percent since 2003. The state’s defense contracting represents 5.1 percent of its economic output, not a negligible figure.

Should a lack of agreement between President Barack Obama, Democrats who control the U.S. Senate and Republicans who control the U.S. House trigger the automatic cuts implanted in the Budget Control Act of 2011, the effect on Connecticut would be severe, resulting in a loss of 36,000 to 50,000 jobs at a time when Connecticut is losing jobs to other states that are more business friendly.

The state treasury, presently more than $300 million in arrears according to a story in CTMirror or $690 million to $1 billion for each of the next two years according to a Bristol Today story, would also be hard hit as the state tumbles off the national fiscal cliff, since the defense industry contributes about $860 million towards Governor Dannel Malloy’s yet unbalanced budget. No one seems to know whether Malloy’s budget has EVER been in balance. According to Comptroller Kevin Lembo’s most recent report, the state has recovered only “31,400 (just over one quarter) of the 117,500 total nonfarm jobs lost in the March 2008 - February 2010 recessionary downturn.”Of the funds received by Connecticut from the federal government and parceled out to contractors, approximately $9.5 billion is spent on customary defense products: Virginia Class submarines, Black Hawk Helicopters, jet engines, turbines, other military components and the like. The spin-off economic activity generated by the contracts is even larger, about $22.4 billion, which affects about 101,000 jobs, according to the Defense Technology Initiative report.

Of the funds received by Connecticut from the federal government and parceled out to contractors, approximately $9.5 billion is spent on customary defense products: Virginia Class submarines, Black Hawk Helicopters, jet engines, turbines, other military components and the like. The spin-off economic activity generated by the contracts is even larger, about $22.4 billion, which affects about 101,000 jobs, according to the Defense Technology Initiative report.

Of course, the depth of the national “fiscal cliff” may be reduced if the president, the Democratic controlled U.S. Senate and the Republican controlled U.S. House are able to reach a satisfactory compromise on the self-elapsing Bush era tax cuts, otherwise known as tax increases.

But even assuming an end to the game of chicken, there must be defense cuts. Obama– who won the election -- needs the defense cuts to apply as a continuing payment on the Democrat’s new and expensive social programs, primarily Obamacare. And Connecticut’s all Democratic congressional delegation, having pledged its troth to Obama’s vision of the future in recently concluded state campaigns, is hardly in a position to offer at the alter a strenuous opposition to either Obama’s proposed defense cuts or increased taxes on quarter-millionaires or the increases in spending that will be plugged into a future Obama budget – presuming the president surprises everyone and offers a passable budget in his second term.

Unfortunately, Connecticut’s congressional delegation may not be ideally positioned to rescue the state from severe defense cuts. Its two U.S. Senators are relatively new arrivals and do not have enough political chits in the game – unlike departed U.S. Senator Chris Dodd and the departing U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman – to affect spending priorities in their state’s favor; and Connecticut’s House members will be joining an assembly controlled by Republicans averse to a crippling regulatory environment and increased business taxes that may, they predict, lead to a double dip recession and adversely impact an agonizingly slow recovery.

All of which leaves Connecticut in limbo, not to be confused with Lembo, who appears to be able to forecast deficits much more ably than the Malloyalists surrounding the governor, or indeed the governor himself – who recently promised no fewer than three times in one media availability that there will be no new tax increases in the coming budget – a dubious cry that recalls George H. W. Bush’s no new tax pledge and former Governor and Spendthrift Lowell “The Maverick” Weicker’s prophetic insistence that a state income tax would incinerate to Connecticut’s economic infrastructure .

The Mop Up

It looks as if Republicans, once again, did not bring home the bacon in Connecticut. Campaign analysts are asking why.

This is an easy one. Republicans are outnumbered in the state roughly by a ratio of two to one, a very steep hill to climb. And, considering the historic nature of journalism in Connecticut, they cannot expect a leg up from the state’s left of center media. The Hartford Courant’s election eve endorsement editorial for instance looked as if it had been dictated to the paper’s publisher and editorial board by David Axelrod, and the paper’s endorsement of Democrat Elizabeth Esty over moderate Republican Andrew Roraback was particularly self-serving.

The paper endorsed all Democrats, at least two of whom are congresspersons for life, U. S. Representatives Rosa DeLauro and John Larson. If it is the mission of journalism to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, that editorial is a frank admission that the mission has been abandoned. Mr. Larson and Mrs. DeLauro are very comfortable indeed; not so their opponents, who are discomforted by massive spending gaps.

Linda McMahon spent a hundred million dollars in two attempts to win a vacant U.S. Senatorial position and lost both times. Is there a message there?

There is: Money alone can’t buy you a Senate seat. Mrs. McMahon spent $41,474,257 on her campaign, while her Democratic opponent Chris Murphy spent $9,345,243, a ratio of 4.5 to 1. Most journalists, and not a few voters on the receiving end of her mailers, were horrified by the imbalance; however, it was impossible to help but notice that the McMahon-Murphy spending gap was much smaller than that in two other races.

John Larson spent $1,961,468 defending himself from his Republican challenger, John Decker, who spent $47,005, a 41 to 1 gap. And Rosa DeLauro spent $1,039,238 defending herself against Republican Wayne Winsley, who spent $51,668, a gap of 20 to 1. Mr. Larson is operating within a gerrymandered district that makes ANY campaign fundraising redundant, and Mrs. DeLauro’s district fairly assures her a lifetime sinecure. Yet these imbalances, obvious for many years in their campaigns, hardly raised an eyebrow among the state’s left of center media.

There were no great numerical losses for Republicans in the General Assembly; the numbers remain similar, though some seats changed.

Republican conservatives lost at least one valiant soldier in state Senator Len Suzio, who was targeted by the Malloy administration for having discomforted Mike Lawlor, Governor Dannel Malloy’s Under Secretary for Criminal Justice and the architect of a problem plagued early release program. The thin-skinned Malloy administration is nettled by its gadflies and punishes them ruthlessly whenever possible. Suzio, a man of honor, lost by a heart stopping 221 votes out of nearly 40,000 cast in his overwhelmingly Democratic District after his opponent had imported many of his views into her campaign. The Malloy administration targeted other nettlesome conservative legislators but, for the most part, the few conservatives in the General Assembly acquitted themselves well.

What part was played in Connecticut elections by the Tea Party?

Tea Party members withdrew their participation, discreetly for the most part.

Is the Tea Party, some wonder, still a force to be reckoned with?

Though the Tea Party is not a party but rather a movement, some leaders within the movement recall General Ulysses Grant’s response after a humiliating counter attack by Confederate forces at Fort Donelson, “Dig in, we will get’em tomorrow.”

Tea Party members were not sought as campaign recruits by either McMahon or Roraback, who lost his race to Esty by a relatively slim margin. The Democrats, of course, used the Tea Party as a foil in their races, a stratagem devised by President Barack Obama’s Chicago shakers and movers, although it was clear that most Tea Party members in Connecticut were not animated by the Republican offerings this year. Mr. Murphy, the Planned Parenthood candidate, deployed the Chicago rhetoric to some effect against Mrs. McMahon. But generally, Tea Party folk were disengaged. There was not enough libertarian-conservative pollen among Republican candidates this year to attract the bees.

Looking to the future, what’s the most important take away for Republican candidates?

Both Mr. Roraback and Mrs. McMahon, who positioned themselves in their races as demi-Democrats, have demonstrated that Weickerism doesn’t work anymore. Mothball it; try something different. The Republican Party needs more Grants and fewer McClellans.

Journalists Fiddle While Benghazi Burns

It would be a disgrace to journalism in Connecticut if questions concerning the murder of a U.S. ambassador attached to the consulate in Benghazi were not put to all the members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation, preferably before Connecticut voters march to the polls to decide who among the candidates for Congress this year are best fitted to represent them.

Among candidates who may find themselves in Congress after November has come and gone are Representatives John Larson and Rosa DeLauro, both of whom occupy safe districts that, so it would seem, likely will not fall to Republicans. Other Congressional seats are more competitive. On the Democratic side in the U.S. House, incumbent U.S. Representatives Joe Courtney in the 2^nd District and Jim Himes in the 4^th District are defending their seats against Republicans Paul Formica and Steve Obsitnik. The 5^th District race, an open seat, pits Democrat Elizabeth Esty against Republican Andrew Roraback and could go either way. In the U.S. Senate race, current Democratic U.S. Representative Chris Murphy has a slight edge over Republican Linda McMahon.

The attack on the consulate in Libya has been a tar baby for President Barrack Obama, largely because the president and members of his administration took the view immediately following attacks by terrorists associated with al-Qaida in the African Maghreb that the murderous assault on U.S. Ambassador Ted Stevens and his much reduced band of security defenders sprang from a spontaneous protest against an amateurish film trailer defaming the prophet Mohammed. Within a short time of the assault, it became clear there was no protest near the consulate during an attack that lasted several hours. The security force protecting the consulate had earlier been reduced after assaults on the British ambassador.An earlier attack destroyed part of perimeter wall surrounding the consulate, and thus far no one in the Obama administration has sufficiently accounted for the reduction in security staff prior to 9/11, a date often exploited by al-Qaida terrorists.

Had Sherlock Holmes been on the scene, he would have reminded Dr. Watson, somewhat curtly, that the absence of a protest preceding the terrorist attack would strongly suggest that the ensuing mayhem could not have arisen spontaneously from a film that had enraged non-existent protesters. Elementary, my dear Watson.

In addition, the assault on the embassy appeared to be a well-coordinated attack on the ambassador and other brave military operatives two of whom, disregarding repeated orders from the CIA to “stand down,” rushed to the consulate from the annex in an attempt to extract Ambassador Stevens and ferry him to the annex where both, overcome by superior force, died.

The death of Navy Seal Tyrone Woods is morally nettlesome: Involved in two shootouts with terrorists at the consulate and the annex, Mr. Woods expired on the annex rooftop where he lay mortally injured, having repeatedly called for help that never materialized. Though the White House might have ordered an extraction of the ambassador-- help during the long ordealcould have been dispatched in a few hours – that order remained stillborn.

The attack on the consulate and the annex a mile distant was captured by two drones circling overhead, an evidentiary record sent in real time to Langley Air Force Base and members of the Obama administration. In view of persistent misrepresentations made by Obama officials who implausibly claimed that the murders of Ambassador Stevens others were connected with a film supposed to have sparked the assault, the drone record is a must-see.

Yet, if any journalist in Connecticut has asked Mr. Murphy, who sits on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, to intercede with the Obama administration and demand the release of the drones' real time record, his answer is not readily apparent from anything he has said in debates or on the campaign stump. The remaining members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation -- Mr. Larson, who serves on the Committee on Ways and Means, which controls tax writing, Mrs. DeLauro, who serves on the Committee on Appropriations, and Mr. Himes, who sits on the House Banking Committee, all positions or power and authority – have maintained a discreet and deadly silence as the Benghazi ordeal has progressed from political incompetence to what may be a cover-up of major proportions in an administration that early on had pledged itself to an extraordinary degree of transparency.

This suffocating silence rolling over the bodies of four Americans – every one a hero – stems either from inexcusable ignorance, mendacious incompetence or the overriding campaign concerns of the Obama administration. This winding shroud of silence smothering a cry of help never answered even now could be shattered by journalists in Connecticut and elsewhere who are not asleep at their keyboards.

Courant Endorsements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DNC Messaging

It’s a little bit like watching a fly fallen into mug of beer wildly flapping its wings. Once the rhetorical mood hits Governor Dannel Malloy, he DOES go on.

One has only to compare the talking points in the 20 minute speech given by Mr. Malloy with those given by 1^st District U.S. Representative John Larson to understand that the script from which both borrowed was co-produced at Central Casting.

In his pre-speech remarks, Mr. Malloy vowed that he would not spend his time during his strut on the national stage talking about himself,unlike his Republican Party nemesis, Governor Chris Christie of New York. Reporters and commentators who have covered the much traveled, fleet-footed Mr. Malloy since he was first sworn in as governor well understand how the presence of a camera awakens the showman in him. Unlike preceding Republican Governor Jodi Rell, Mr. Malloy does not shrink from partisan displays, and be bathes in media adulation more often than other Connecticut politicians.

This dramatic announcement from Mr. Malloy – it’s not about me; really, it’s never about me – was somewhat subverted when 1^stDistrict U.S. Representative John Larson stepped to the podium and delivered a 20 minute stem-winder that was 1) about himself and 2) overburdened with pretty much the same central casting talking points employed by Mr. Malloy.

Malloy on the GOP plan for entitlements:“Malloy said the GOP plan would slash education and entitlement programs ‘so Romney can give a tax cut of $265,000 to your average millionaire, and continue billions of dollars in subsidies for big oil.’

Larson on the same: “Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have a different vision. Look at the details. The biggest problem with the Romney-Ryan plan for Medicare is obvious: They take away the Medicare, they end the guarantee, hand out vouchers, limit benefits, and force seniors to pay the difference of up to $6,400 dollars out of their own pockets.”

Same church, same pew, same rollicking partisan sermon; nothing unusual here, considering the setting. The progressive lions on the convention floor wanted red meat, and the two Connecticut Democrats gave it to them. Political conventions are part pulpit show, part circus sideshow. Everyone is expected to bow to the pieties and cheer wildly when the bearded lady is brought on stage.

Asked whether the country was better off than it had been before Mr. Obama took office, Mr. Malloy cried out exuberantly “Hell, yeah!”

A few short weeks before the DNC convened, Newsweek – hardly a conservative organ of opinion – printed a devastating cover story written by Niall Ferguson, “Obama’s Gotta Go,” that chilled the bones of Obamabot economist Paul Krugman:
 

“Certainly, the stock market is well up (by 74 percent) relative to the close on Inauguration Day 2009. But the total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million below the January 2008 peak. Meanwhile, since 2008, a staggering 3.6 million Americans have been added to Social Security’s disability insurance program. This is one of many ways unemployment is being concealed.

“In his fiscal year 2010 budget—the first [Mr. Obama] presented—the president envisaged growth of 3.2 percent in 2010, 4.0 percent in 2011, 4.6 percent in 2012. The actual numbers were 2.4 percent in 2010 and 1.8 percent in 2011; few forecasters now expect it to be much above 2.3 percent this year.”

“Unemployment was supposed to be 6 percent by now. It has averaged 8.2 percent this year so far. Meanwhile real median annual household income has dropped more than 5 percent since June 2009. Nearly 110 million individuals received a welfare benefit in 2011, mostly Medicaid or food stamps.”

In America today, Mr. Ferguson pointed out, only half of the population is “invested” in its government:

“Nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return -- almost exactly the same proportion that lives in a household where at least one member receives some type of government benefit. We are becoming the 50–50 nation -- half of us paying the taxes, the other half receiving the benefits.”

Debt burden figures, Mr. Ferguson maintained, are grossly underappreciated. He then hauled from the closet the “most recent estimate for the difference between the net present value of federal government liabilities and the net present value of future federal revenues—what economist Larry Kotlikoff calls the true “fiscal gap” -- is $222 trillion.”

The $222 trillion gap between expected future revenues and liabilities is a measure in dollars of the difference between the past and future prosperity of the country. “Not only did the initial fiscal stimulus fade after the sugar rush of 2009,” Mr. Ferguson writes, “but the president has done absolutely nothing to close the long-term gap between spending and revenue.” And while Mr. Ferguson, once an advisor to presidential candidate John McCain certainly is no fan of Mr. Obama, neither is the non-partisan data brought forward in the Newsweek cover story, which apparently has not been read by the ebullient Mr. Malloy or Mr. Larson.