Killing Bi-Partisanship

Connecticut operates on a two year budget and makes adjustments in the budget’s second year. Currently, the General Assembly is addressing itself to the second year of Governor Malloy’s’ second biennial budget. During his years in office, Mr. Malloy and dominant Democrats in the legislature have never produced an appropriation and spending plan that bears Republican fingerprints.

Republicans viewed Mr. Malloy’s budget as a political document because, to say the truth, all budgets are political documents. Prior to passage, senate Republican leader John McKinney, running this year for governor, pointed to a “frightening lack of detail” in the single most important piece of legislation the General Assembly has considered in the new fiscal year. The Malloy budget plan will shape the destiny of the state for the next two years.

Mr. Malloy, it will be recalled, also shooed Republicans out of the room when he was assembling his first budget. Democratic leaders in the General Assembly pre-approved Mr. Malloy’s first budget. Mr. Malloy then negotiated contractual terms favorable to SEBAC, a state union coalition called by some Connecticut’s fourth branch of government, and the final product, altered in protracted negotiations, did not return to the General Assembly for approval before being signed into law by the governor. The Democrat dominated General Assembly, abrogating its constitutional obligation to vote on a substantially altered budget, had invested the first Democratic governor since William O’Neill declined to run for re-election with near plenipotentiary powers, an investiture of powers not uncommon in other one party states.

The back-room budget negotiations, conducted entirely in private, ought to have alerted members of Connecticut’s left of center media that neither public notice nor bi-party participation is necessary in a one party state. The Malloy administration has become the most secretive back-room directed government in living memory. But then, everybody knows that all one party governments do this sort of thing with impunity: The one party state gets away with tucking dead bodies under the rug because there is no political antagonist in the room to report the attempted concealment.

This time around, the best laid plans of Malloy and company were torn asunder by a collapsing private marketplace. Although the national recession ended in 2009, here in Connecticut, following the largest tax increase in state history, the malaise marches on. While the nation has gained back about three quarters of the jobs lost during the last recession, Connecticut has recovered only half. Noting that Connecticut “lost its chief marketing tool” with the imposition of the income tax in 1991, a recent University of Connecticut study, “The Connecticut Economy,” recommends the elimination of the state’s corporate income tax. When a tax is reduced in Connecticut, it is generally supposed by all tax consumers that the hole punched in the budget by tax reductions cannot be backfilled with spending cuts. Ergo: taxes may NEVER be cut.

Connecticut’s collapsing budget is heavily reliant on taxes reaped from financial institutions, and progressives in the state, perpetually on the hunt for new tax resources to plunder so they might fund improvident spending, would like nothing better than to take a larger tax piece out of the hides of precisely those financial firms that have been holding the state’s head above water during President Barack Obama protracted recession. So far, Mr. Malloy has been able to repulse attacks from wild-eyed progressives at the gates while schmoozing with public sector union chiefs. In a post-election Malloy administration, the governor will “have more flexibility” to reconsider his often repeated pledges not to raise taxes. The governor has not pledged to decrease spending, a kiss of death pledge in any pre-election campaign.

At least one newspaper, the New London Day, has warned us that Connecticut’s current spending level is unsustainable.  But Mr. Malloy, media Malloyalists, progressive big spenders, Democratic leaders in the Democratic dominated General Assembly, fourth branch of government union leaders, municipal leaders dependent on state grants – none of these special interests are interested in lopping, say, $1.5 billion from the state budget, a figure that just might catch the eye of in-state businesses looking for the exit signs.

Ergo: Taxes will rise; regulations will increase; business activity will decrease; the population of Connecticut, the only state in the union to have lost population, will decrease; prices, including the price of education in Connecticut, will increase; and the state will continue its downward trajectory until it reaches bottom, at which time it may be possible to hope for a sweeping change in government.

But hope is no surety of success. Progressive one party states such as Venezuela, once known as the Paris of Latin America, reached bottom long ago, and Connecticut, blessed by geographical determinants, a once healthy two party system and a shared understanding that state spending is no guarantee of prosperity, appears to have adopted the Hugo Chavez’s leadership model, along with his sound and fury rhetoric. It used to be said of God – when politicians yet believed in God – that He must love the poor, having made so many of them. The same may be said of most one party progressive states. Connecticut will be no exception.

Taking the 5th

The FBI was a major player in the drama. And everything that has happened on the public stage should convince Connecticut’s General Assembly that the state needs an Inspector General to uproot corruption before the FBI enters the theater.  When federal prosecutors turn up on the scene, Grand Guigno unfolds.

John McKinney, a Republican running for governor this year who has not yet been drawn by federal prosecutors into the mire, has proposed just that. His proposal has been received in silence by Democratic leaders in the General Assembly who control political business in the chamber.

The FBI intervention began when the struggle for the 5^th District U.S. Congressional seat left vacant after Chris Murphy’s elevation to the U.S. Senate seemed to be a contest between then Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan and an assortment of Republican hopefuls that included longtime State Senate leader Andrew Roraback, a late entry into the Republican primary, and three Republicans who had not held office before: Justin Bernier, Lisa-Wilson Foley and Mark Greenberg. The Republican nominating convention settled upon Mr. Roraback, a senator for more than a dozen years in the redistricted Torrington, Litchfield County area, and for several years Deputy Minority Leader Pro Tempore and Minority Caucus Chairman of the State Senate. On the Democratic side, Mr. Donovan, an early favorite, ran into an FBI sting operation in the course of which he was forced to withdraw from the race after federal prosecutors had indicted several of his campaign staff.

The FBI stinger in the poorly concealed operation was former Corrections Department union steward Ray Soucy – quite a character. In the Tammany Hall of the early 1900’s, Mr. Soucy would have made a superb ward heeler. FBI agents recruited Mr. Soucy to help them infiltrate and incriminate those running the Donovan campaign operation. He was their wired canary. The apple in the Democratic Party Garden of Eden was the promise of bundled campaign contributions given mostly to Democrats and some Republicans on the understanding that they would do all in their power to snuff a bill that would have put out of business roll-your-own cigarette operations. Several of Mr. Donovan’s campaign operatives fell for Mr. Soucy’s pitch and eagerly grasped the tainted FBI supplied campaign contributions.

Caught with their hands in the cookie jar, some staff members working on Mr. Donovan’s U.S. House campaign rolled over and gave additional testimony to prosecutors inclined to reduce their charges in return for their co-operation.

At one point, Mr. Soucy stuffed an envelope full of cash into a refrigerator used by Republican House leader Larry Cafero. Mr. Cafaro rejected the cash, and his aide gave instruction to Mr. Soucy how he might legally contribute to Republican campaign coffers. Mr. Cafero was told by the FBI he was not a target of their sting operation. The big fish, Mr. Donovan, was not legally compromised. Perhaps the stench of political pollution had reached his nostrils, or perhaps he had been tipped off on the FBI sting before he could be legally implicated; in any case, his campaign had been doomed. Democrats then turned to Elizabeth Esty, who defeated the Republican Party nominee, Mr. Roraback, in the general election.

So then, let’s tote up the winners and losers.

Ms. Esty won the seat, clearly a win on the Democratic side. Mr. Roraback, a liberal on social issues and a fiscal conservative, lost the race. Oddly, his candidacy was not endorsed by the Hartford Courant, Connecticut’s only state-wide newspaper. Since former Governor Lowell Weicker had left Connecticut’s political stage, the Courant had been searching for just such a golden Republican candidate as Mr. Roraback to endorse. Mr. Roraback, helpful to Democrats in the General Assembly as a passionate opponent of the state’s death penalty, later was appointed a Justice to the State Superior Court by Governor Dannel Malloy, a win for Democrats. Mr. Donovan was not prosecuted, a win for him and Democrats.  And then there is the continuing collateral damage arising from the Donovan sting – all of it harmful to Republicans and beneficial to Democrats.

The collateral damage involves Former Republican Governor John Rowland and Lisa Wilson Foley, one of the Republican contenders for the 5^th District seat.

If we brush away most of the political froth, it is not at all certain that Mr. Rowland will be packed off to prison a second time. Grand juries produce tons of damning press, because they are, essentially, prosecutorial star chambers. What we have heard so far in the media is the voice of the prosecution. The charges against Mr. Rowland, some lawyers believe, are weak – if he did not falsify his tax records. The public case against Mr. Rowland – what for lack of a better word we should call the ethical case -- is damning, but judges, unlike political commentators, are not much interested in romping through the souls of politicians. Mr. Rowland, not an active politician, allegedly made a pitch to Ms. Foley to help her in her campaign on the sly; he entered into agreement with a second Republican contender for the 5^th District seat to do the same. That second agreement never bore fruit, because the second politician, Mr. Greenberg, presently an announced Republican candidate for the 5^th District, was more ethically fine-tuned than either Faust or Satan. As a grown-up, Ms. Foley was perfectly capable of resisting the tempter, as Mr. Greenberg had done.  The case against Mr. Rowland is far from a slam dunk. It is a difficult case to prosecute, and its outcome is by no means certain.

A “but" follows.

It’s difficult for Democrats to exploit this one politically. The two principal actors involved are a candidate for office who has never held a political position and a political commentator. The very possibility of political corruption among Republicans is slight because they are not in a power broker’s position. The political heights are commanded by Democrats. They own the political trading floor – all of it: the governor’s office, all the constitutional offices and both houses of the General Assembly. If Republicans wanted to trade political favors for money or power, it’s difficult to see how the matter could be arranged. It is possible that the FBI has not yet given serious attention to the real distribution of political power in Connecticut. The political game, all of it, has been moved into the Democrat’s court. You cannot rob a bank in which there is no money. Republicans in Connecticut are power-broke, and it is only a matter of time before federal prosecutors and political commentators in Connecticut embrace the shattering revelation – at which point all the big guns may pivot towards Democrats, proprietors of Connecticut’s one party state.

Social Issues And The Democrats

On “social issues,” as defined by Democrats in the Northeast, here is no “there” there within the Republican Party’s ancient regime.

Northeast Republicans have only one election card on their table – the economy, stupid. There ain’t no more. Slothful Northeast Republican Parties have permitted Democrats to define all the social issues; for them, such subjects as abortion on demand, gay marriage and the abolition of the death penalty are strictly verboten. Among gentlemen Republican moderates in Connecticut, discretion on social issues has been the better part of valor for more than two decades, which may help to explain why there are no more social issue averse Republicans in New England.

The last Republican moderate in Connecticut who surrendered to Democrats on social issues was State Senator Andrew Roraback. Recently appointed to the judiciary by Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy, Mr. Roraback lost his bid for the U.S. House of Representatives to present U.S. Rep Elizabeth Esty.

Mr. Roraback’s loss was preceded by other Republican Party losses. Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation used to be studded with a host of moderate Republicans, among them U.S. Representatives Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons and Chris Shays. They have all been replaced by left of center Democrats. Mr. Malloy and the Malloyalists are all progressive Democrats. The moderate Democrat also has become an endangered species, at least here in the Northeast. In other parts of the nation, moderate Democrats, taking a cue from unions, are abandoning Obamacare in droves. Not in Connecticut. Obamacare is to progressives in Connecticut what the Alamo was to patriotic Texans.  

Concerning the much more lively and combative progressive Democrats, the National Journal puts it this way: “’Especially on social issues, the center of gravity in the Democratic Party has moved in the more liberal direction,’ said Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration official and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. ‘There's a new generation of Democrats who see lots of gain and very little pain in stronger gun safety legislation and gay marriage.’”

That is simply another way of saying that the forward motion within the Democratic Party, since the advent of President Barack Obama and his Chicago political machine, has been to the left; progressives are liberals raised to the 3^rd power and beyond.

When a newspaper wished to bestow a compliment on Republican candidate for governor John McKinney it wrote of his father, Stewart McKinney, that the late 4^th District U.S. House Representative “was the type of Republican that has all but vanished from the political landscape: A New Englander who smartly blended fiscal conservatism with social progressivism, working on pro-environment legislation and supporting abortion rights.”

The 4^th District is now owned by Democrat Jim Himes. The 5^th District was owned by progressive Democrat Chris Murphy before he moved on to the U.S. Senate. The entire Connecticut U.S. Congressional delegation is progressive, and one of the reasons New Englanders who in the past neatly blended fiscal conservatism with social conservatism are now so rare a species in the Northeast is that all of them have been replaced by Democrats who are left of center on economic issues and purebred progressives on social issues.

Not only are there no social moderates, Republican or Democrat, in Connecticut’s one party state, there are no fiscal conservatives either. “Fiscal conservatism” is a blind used by Democrats in Connecticut who quickly abandon all pretense of a prudent economic policy once they achieve office.

If in the post Obama era you vote for a fiscally conservative, socially progressive Democrat , you will end up, after he has mingled in the course of a few months with brother progressives in the legislature, with a fiscally and socially progressive enthusiast of the purest water. The whole notion of a fiscal conservative who is also a social progressive is in much of the Northeast a rib tickling mythical construct – like a unicorn or a griffin.

The problem with the Connecticut Republican Party is NOT that it does not know how to stoop on social issues to conquer on fiscal issues. The problem is that the stooping no longer conquers – because Republicans have permitted the far left to define “social issues.” That is why the moderate Republican in New England is nearly an extinct species; he has ceded half the political battleground to the opposition and lost the war.

Republicans must learn how to broaden the “social issues” category to include the social ramifications of such obvious disasters as Obamacare, the one party state, crony capitalism, the disintegration of families, a penology that crowds courts and prisons with social delinquents while giving get-out-of-jail-early credits to murderous inmates, arrogant legislators who think it unnecessary to schedule hearings on bills that shape the future of the state, a tax, regulatory and spending policy that drives businesses out of Connecticut… and on and on. All these are SOCIAL ISSUES, women’s issues, minority issues, and left unattended, they will bring Connecticut to its knees, which is exactly the suppliant posture that politically suits the kind of progressive who regards the salvation state as the first and only resource for afflicted citizens.

The Malloyalist Propaganda Machine

After it had been pointed out that his drawings were hypercritical and highly unflattering representations of his subjects, a famous caricaturist responded,“What’s the point of having absolute power, if you are not prepared to abuse it?”

Roy Occhiogrosso, Governor Dannel Malloy’s Senior Advisor and a fierce Malloyalist, should have internalized the quote so that he would be able to flourish it when asked by reporters why the governor thought it necessary to recruit dozens of state officials as propaganda agents.

First Abolition, Then Commutation

The death penalty in Connecticut, after several previous attempts, was abolished today by the Senate in a 20-16 vote. The House is certain to pass the abolition bill, and Governor Dannel Malloy has pledged to sign it into law. Senator Edith Prague, who voted in favor of abolition before she voted against it, this time voted to abolish the death penalty prospectively. A prospective rather than a retrospective abolition of the death penalty, it is said by proponents of abolition, will leave untouched the death sentences of eleven inmates awaiting execution on death row,.

After an emotional meeting with Dr. William Petit, the sole survivor of a home invasion Cheshire in which two now convicted murderers took the lives of his wife and two daughters, Mrs. Prague famously said of one of the two murderers convicted and sentenced to death, “They should bypass the trial and take that second animal and hang him by his penis from a tree out in the middle of Main Street.”

But emotional responses, little more than convenient masks politicians sometimes put on to curry favor with voters, are evanescent. When the most recent bill abolishing the death penalty was presented to the general assembly, Mrs. Prague changed both her emotions and her vote.

The abolition of the death penalty raises the question of commutation for those awaiting punishment on death row. Unlike other states, commutations in Connecticut are parceled out by the legislature, not the governor. But it is always possible that an appellate court may strike down that provision in the abolition bill that preserves the death penalty for the 11 convicted murderers on Connecticut’s death row.

The possibility of commutation for the "Connecticut 11" was raised by Senator John McKinney prior to the vote in the General Assembly. Senator Prague allowed that discretion was decisive in judicial findings; for this reason, she said, it was essential that the abolition legislation must “make it very loud and very clear that this repeal cannot apply to anyone who is on death row.”

Mr. McKinney responded that even in the face of unambiguous language in the bill stipulating the abolition law is not intended to apply to inmates already sentenced to death, the courts would view the intent of congress clause as immaterial: “That’s a decision that will be decided in the courts. No one disputes that there will be a legal challenge brought by the public defender’s office and the weight of the legal experts is to say that a prospective death penalty won’t pass constitutional muster.”

The air in the small room, crowded with reporters during a media availability just prior to the Senate vote, was liberally sprinkled with the usual Democratic caucus propaganda. Reporters were addressed by the three vanguards of death penalty repeal – President of the Senate Don Williams, Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, Senator Eric Coleman, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, all three of them lawyers, and Correction Commissioner Leo Arnone. The irrepressible Mr. Coleman could not forbear mentioning that abolition was for him a matter of conscience, “even should it [the death penalty] be repealed prospectively,” leaving eleven prisoners facing death in the absence of a law mandating execution. The three were peppered with questions concerning the likelihood that appellate courts might void that portion of the bill that seeks to prevent abolition for the inmates facing execution.

Dr. Samuel Johnson, were he a member of the General Assembly, easily could explain why the abolition bill cherished by Democratic caucus leaders should have been applied retroactively.

Nulla poena sine lege– “Where there is no law, there is no transgression” – is a part of the Natural Law that informs all laws. When Mr. Johnson was reporting on debates in the House of Commons, he offered this gloss on the doctrine: “That where there is no law there is no transgression, is a maxim not only established by universal consent, but in itself evident and undeniable; and it is, Sir, surely no less certain that where there is no transgression, there can be no punishment.”

Any sound legal defense of prospective capital punishment collapsed upon repeal of the death penalty sanction: Where there is no law, there can be no transgression; where there is no transgression, there can be no punishment. That is the rule of law not simply in Connecticut; it is a part of the natural law written with a finger of fire in the hearts of just men, not excepting judges, though some are prone to political pressure adeptly applied by ambitious politicians.

Death penalty opponents have been in the habit of referring falsely to a just death penalty as “judicial murder.” Having voided the death penalty, what possible moral reason can be advanced to justify what should rightly be regarded as murder, plain and simple? No possible justification can be advanced that does not do violence both to the law and the moral sense of just men and women. The death penalty abolition bill as proposed – with its prospective feature – is political Babbitry of the worst kind, a fainthearted retreat from legislative responsibility. The Democratic General Assembly, having messed its pants with this ill proposed bill, will now expect the courts to wash its diapers and apply through judicial edict the retroactive feature it was too politically cowardly to attach to it.

Connecticut’s Politicians And Their Gambling Hormones

Republican leader John McKinney, very much alone, has decided that Connecticut should oppose a ruling by a U.S. Justice Department functionary to open the doors of the Republic’s 50 states to internet gambling.

On the question of internet gambling, Governor Dannel Malloy has already folded – pun intended. Mr. Malloy has said that internet gambling is at least as inevitable as death and taxes. The enabling ruling revises an earlier understanding that internet gambling should not be permitted, while at the same time holding out to states the promise of a hefty return in new tax revenue.

Appearing on The Talk of Connecticut with Brad Davis, Mr. McKinney said in so many words that the expansion of gambling and its attendant taxes ought to be firmly resisted.

In his effort to re-define Connecticut, Mr. Malloy has mounted soap boxes all across the state in vigorous attempts, largely successful, to push forward his tax and spending agenda for Connecticut. Mr. Malloy instituted the largest tax increase in Connecticut history. Only the proverbial man from Mars could believe that spending increases will not follow, one might say inevitably, in the wake of such tax increases.

This re-invention business is no easy task; neither is it cheap. On the question of opening his state to internet gambling -- and coincidentally to an additional revenue stream much needed by Mr. Malloy to produce surpluses necessary for pushing the state forward on the governor’s predetermined path – Mr. Malloy has become unaccountably camera shy and powerless. He has not mounted a single soapbox in the state to inveigh against internet gambling. He had not publicly instructed by letter the members of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation, all Democrats sitting in the same ideological pew as the governor, to attempt an legislative assault on the interpretation of a Justice Department functionary. Neither has he asked Attorney General George Jepsen to resist that ruling in federal courts.

The governor finds himself in good company. The editorial board of the Hartford Courant has agreed with the governor that internet gambling is inevitable. When good men do nothing, inevitability happens. U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal who as attorney general once strenuously opposed internet gambling for all the right reasons suddenly finds himself suffering from moral anemia.

Only four years ago, Mr. Blumenthal flexed his considerable muscles as attorney general when New York state decided to open a horse race betting parlor on the internet, writing indignantly to the New York gaming Commission in one of his morally infused letters:“An out-of-state entity taking Internet wagers from Connecticut also violates the federal Interstate Horseracing Act of 1978, which says, ‘the states should have the primary responsibility for determining what forms of gambling may legally take place within their borders.’"

Huffing and puffing, Mr. Blumenthal continued: "The New York tracks cannot trample our vital rights to prohibit Internet gambling - luring children and compulsive gamblers. Internet gambling is fraught with insidious pitfalls - particularly for children - which is exactly why Connecticut prohibits it. I am hopeful that New York officials cooperate and respect federal and state law. My office will continue to work closely with the Division of Special Revenue to enforce Connecticut gambling laws."

“States… primary responsibility…” Huh? Internet gambling “luring children and compulsive gamblers… fraught with insidious pitfalls…” Come again?

Attorney General Blumenthal used to operate as a one-man temperance league. Now, as U.S. Senator representing a state that’s stone broke from overspending and desperately in need of additional tax resources – even if the resources are filched from helpless children and desperate people unable to master their gambling addictions – internet gambling seems to him a rare inevitability; it will, after all, supply Connecticut with additional tax dollars Mr. Malloy may then dispense to those less fortunate than Mr. Blumenthal or U.S. Reps Jim Himes and Rosa DeLauro, millionaire members in good standing of the one percent club in Washington’s Beltway.

“We've got more than enough state-sanctioned opportunities for people to lose money,” another Courant commentator wrote, “but Malloy is probably right when he says that outlook is irrelevant now that the federal Department of Justice has given the OK to turning computers and mobile devices into virtual casinos. It's hideous, but that won't stop it from coming to your local Internet connection.”

The Malloy administration seems fully prepared to save Connecticut citizens from the hideous effects of the hideous practice it will allow, perhaps by instituting yet another administrative department to bind up the wounds it has caused by abjectly surrendering to the inevitable. This work of salvation, one may be sure, will be costly.

Given the scraping and bowing of Connecticut’s moral epigones before a practice they regard as “hideous,” perhaps Mr. McKinney might consider engaging the services of Bob Englehart of the Courant to produce the following cartoon:

A bordello, above which hangs a shabby but insistent sign -- “Raging Hormone Bordello And Internet Betting Parlor.” Seen through the window, a flimsily dressed, fetching creature wearing a banner that reads, “Place your bets here.” On the street milling in front of the bordello, a crowd of people that includes Mr. Malloy, Mr. Blumenthal and Connecticut’s Democratic U.S. Congressional delegation, all singing the following tune shown in large bubble: “We can’t help our raging hormones. We are only human.”

Such a cartoon would make more sense than the next dozen of the state’s commentaries yielding abjectly to an inevitability that will increase state revenue at a time when some politicians have begun to understand that there must be a ceiling to profligate spending.

Malloy on Taxes: So What?

Tom Dudchik’s popular site, Capitol Report, featured a picture of Democratic Connecticut Govern Dannel Malloy side by side with an accompanying picture of Republican Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman. Mr. Malloy looks a little stern and sour, lips pursed, jaw jutted forward, rather as if he had just told the leaders of SEBAC that they would have to wait on their Cost of Living Increases for a couple of years, while fighting off as he did so an army of benighted tax resistors still smarting from the largest tax increase in Connecticut’s history. Mr. Heineman, on the other hand, appears relaxed and expansive. The title below the pics reads, in an assertive font:

CAPITOL REPORT

RAISE’EM; CUT’EM

The lede on another report was not cheery:

“In Nebraska, Republican Gov. Dave Heineman enacted the biggest tax cut in state history, and the state's unemployment rate of 4.2 percent is now the second lowest in the nation.

“In Connecticut, Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy enacted the largest tax increase in state history this year, and the state's unemployment rate of 9.1 percent ranks in the bottom half in the nation.”

Ditto in the case of a dozen other media reports.

Mr. Heinman chairs the National Governors Association. In that capacity he came to Hartford to boast about the advances his state has made in perilous economic times.

The tax cuts and the consequent economic growth in his state have propelled Nebraska into the top 10 “most business friendly” states:

"It made a real difference in our tax-competitive climate, our business-friendly climate. We know we need to do more. It's all of these things combined. It's not just one. It's taxes. It's regulation. It's workforce development. It's education.''

Mr. Malloy, it need hardly be said, is big on all three -- education, taxes and regulation – though Mr. Heinman was at pains not to point fingers, governors being a bit more collegial than, say, tempestuous congressmen. Republicans as a general rule tend to regulate government whenever possible, leaving Democrats to regulate everything else. Both nationally and stateside, Democrats have been much in the habit recently of transferring tax monies from have-not hard pressed taxpayers to large businesses too big to fail or flee.

The fear nationally is that large failed companies will increase unemployment if they are permitted to go belly-up; therefore they must be propped up by so called millionaires, defined by tax-hungry congressmen in Washington as anyone making more than $200,000 per year. The states fear that large companies, few of them in danger of bolting, may, if they are not supported by hairdresser taxes, scoot across the border into more tax friendly states, giving an advantage to tax cutting governors – almost everyone but Mr. Malloy. And so the large financially secure are bribed to stay, for the time being.

Mr. Malloy responded that Connecticut was also business friendly. The governor first had to kill the Hydra before he could begin to straighten out the state. He raised taxes on hairdressers he said “… so that I could look business in the face and say, 'Listen, I believe we've got the bulk of our problem behind us. We've balanced a budget. We've taken the steps necessary to wrestle a structural deficit to the ground and we move forward…I think we are a tax haven. Although our personal taxes may be high, primarily driven by our over-reliance on property taxes, if you look at our corporate tax structure, we have one of the lowest effective rates on the corporate level.''

Given the large opening in Mr. Malloy’s tent, a critical camel rushed in. Said Republican leader John McKinney:

"So Governor Malloy thinks this is a tax haven? I had no idea. I think the governor's comments that we’re a tax haven show that the governor doesn't get it. Maybe the multi-national large corporations are attracted by a lower corporate tax rate, but our economy is driven by small business owners. ... The way to tell business that you have your house in order is to get spending under control. He doesn't cut spending. He increases spending. I'm almost left speechless at the fact that here's the governor of Nebraska talking about cutting taxes and our governor is believing that increasing taxes improved our business climate. Every small business owner pays the personal taxes that Governor Malloy thinks are too high.''

The Governor’s conference will be a ten day affair. It’s flu season. Perhaps Mr. Malloy can arrange to catch something.

The Real Budget Deal

Fresh from the Democratic Party’s web site, here is Democratic Party chieftain Nancy DiNardo’s reaction to the budget deal that Gov. Dannel Malloy wrested from union representatives:

“Thank you to Governor Malloy, Lt. Governor Wyman, the state employees, and the Democratic leadership in the Assembly for this major accomplishment. This is a critical first step, and there is more work to do, but this is definitely a good day for Connecticut taxpayers. This is what shared sacrifice and real leadership looks like.” - Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo

Though particulars of the deal were not revealed during the weeks of closed door negotiations, a broad outline of the Malloy administration-union deal, according to news reports, involved a union give back of $1.6 billion, $400 million short of Mr. Malloy’s earlier stated goal of $2 billion in the biennium budget. The savings shortfall is to be recovered from resources other than tax increases, according to the governor’s office.

Tucked into the present budget is a surplus of $1 billion that may be deposited in the state’s depleted “rainy day” fund or spent to finance a $900 million improvement of the state’s newest dollar-swallowing White Elephant, the University of Connecticut Health Center, or some other state financial “need” that will arise in the near future. Political columnist George Will defines a “need” as “a want that’s more than 24 hours old.” Needs of this kind have driven Connecticut to the brink of bankruptcy, and the state’s new one party infrastructure will not lessen its neediness.

Mr. Malloy intends to liquidate the greater part of Connecticut’s red ink, the largest per capita deficit in the nation, through a $ 1.4 billion tax increase that Mrs. DiNardo feels is “good for taxpayers.” The Democratic budget – no Republicans in the General Assembly were permitted to adjust it, or even breathe upon it – is the first entirely partisan budget that has seen the light of day in decades. This fiscal term, the Democrats control both the governor’s office and the General Assembly by a margin that renders collegiality among different Party members unnecessary.

Deferring to unions, the governor approved a four year “no lay off” clause that would be irrevocable even if, in future days, the red ink were to rise to cover Mrs. DiNardo’s ankles. The governor also extended the union agreement an additional five years. Unions leaders agreed to forgo raises for two years, after which salaries will increase at 3 percent for three years. Dreaded lay offs were removed from the bargaining table, and the governor considerably narrowed union give backs when, even before serious negotiations had begun, he steadfastly resolved to maintain the state’s obligations to municipalities, effectively removing the need for “shared sacrifice” at the town level -- all in all not a bad deal for the unions.

Before the doors were bolted shut on negotiations, Mr. Malloy suggested that union leaders and Democratic members of the General Assembly should quickly accept his proposal and lay on him the expected political blame arising from taxpayer and union dissatisfaction.

The Democratic budget raised taxes at a time when the governors of contiguous states had forwarded budgets that raised no taxes. Connecticut’s Democratic budget doubles the corporate surcharge during the nation’s deepest and most prolonged recession in many years, when many businesses – as opposed to the unsinkable CEOs of some of “too large to fail” businesses – are suffering rising costs and business slowdowns.

In Massachusetts, once derided in Connecticut as Taxachussetts, the Democratic legislature attacked collective bargaining, one of the more aggressive escalators of governmental costs. Republican leader John McKinney referred obliquely to the Massachusetts miracle in his senate response to the partisan Democratic budget when he said that Connecticut’s sister state had done things that “would be unthinkable” in the Democratic dominated General Assembly.

In a story in CTMirror, Mark Pazniokas was one of the few reporters in the state who noted that Mr. Malloy this year had an infrequent opportunity to drive down the costs of union contracts that would not occur again until 2017, “three years after the next gubernatorial election,’ when current union contracts on pension and health benefits expired.

Gubernatorial leverage in union negotiations, in other words, is limited by the date of expiration on union contracts, an arrangement that gives unions an inestimable edge in negotiations with elected representatives in the state that unions would doubtless prefer to maintain, for it prevents governors and legislators from pressuring unions to make deals that Mrs. DiNardo, the head of the Democratic Party, amusingly considers a boon to taxpayers. There is no movement afoot in Connecticut’s new one party state to redress this costly imbalance; neither will union reliant Democrats challenge binding arbitration

The Trouble With Plan A

There were several things wrong with Plan B, the most important of which was that it was not proposed by the Malloy administration as a serious effort to control spending, the pink elephant in budget room. But Plan A as currently constructed does not control spending either, because spending in Connecticut is driven by entitlements, long term union contracts and binding arbitration, cost escalators left untouched by Plan A.

Plan B was never more than a pistol held to the temples of union negotiators who had resisted the gubernatorial dictates of Plan A.

Conceived as a threat, Plan B was presented to the general public as a threat, and its conception and presentation were received by the general public in the same spirit. Indeed, Governor Dannel Malloy and both leaders of the Democratic dominated General Assembly, President of the Senate Don Williams and Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, repeatedly and roundly condemned Plan B even as it was presented, as a cruel default budget plan. Plan B was not Mr. Malloy’s preferred option, the governor said repeatedly.

State Senator Edith Prague, during her 28 years in the General Assembly a devoted union supporter, fairly fainted when she got a gander at Plan B, every Democrat’s mock-up of what they think a Republican budget might have looked like if union operatives had failed to turn out a sufficient number of votes in two of Connecticut’s principal cities during the gubernatorial election, which votes drove the election in Mr. Malloy’s favor by the slimmest of margins and prevented a Republican victory.

"This Plan B takes my breath away,'' said the vice chairwoman of the budget-writing appropriations committee.”It's so unbelievable what it would do to the state of Connecticut. I can't believe these cuts. This is the worst I have seen.''

Plan B passed along Mr. Malloy’s “shared sacrifice” to municipalities by threatening to cut state grants to towns. Among Democrats, it has been supposed that such cuts would result in higher property taxes. But, in fact, such cuts, accompanied by reductions in state mandates, easily could have resulted in cost saving measures within municipalities that might have rolled back than Plan A the tsunami of spending that threatens to beggar the state. Towns, through budget referendums, have been much more successful in reducing costs than have legislators in the Democratic dominated General Assembly.

When Republican leader John McKinney rose in the state senate to protest the Democratic hegemon that had produced a budget without a single Republican fingerprint on it, he touched very lightly on the recent strange doings within the Massachusetts legislature, dominated even more heavily by Democrats, “if one could believe such a thing,” than the General Assembly in Connecticut.

Perhaps to spare the fidgeting Mr. Williams seated beside him, Mr. McKinney did not let the words “repeal binding arbitration” fall from his lips. He spoke in general terms of the Massachusetts legislature having done things that would astonish and appall Democrats in Connecticut. In fact, the Massachusetts legislature, fitfully attempting to regain control of spending, had produced bill abolishing binding arbitration.

Binding arbitration, entitlements and long term union contracts have this in common: They all bind future governors and legislators and are, for that reason, profoundly anti-republican. At the center of republican government lies the notion that a legislature should not be able to bind its successor. The republican ideal is that the people, through their elected representatives, should be able to shape the future. Costly entitlements frustrate republican government. By way of example, the entitlement liabilities of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security amount to $75 trillion, five times the Gross Domestic Product. The national debt is pegged upwards of $14 trillion; but toss in state and municipal debt and the figure balloons to $140 trillion. These are chains that bind. In attempting to repeal binding arbitration, the Democratic dominated Massachusetts legislature is seeking to throw off a few links of the chain to clear the future of roadblocks that prevent a profitable forward movement.

Managing Editor of the Journal Inquirer Chris Powell, who also writes a column in the paper, is one of the best budget commentators in the state. Mr. Powell has been calling upon the Democratic dominated General Assembly to abolish binding arbitration for years, to no avail. Recently his admonitions have had some success – in Wisconsin. And now in Massachussetts. The whirlpool of common sense is edging closer.

In a recent column the very title of which may cause Mrs. Prague to swoon -- “On to Plan B where we should have started” -- Mr. Powell greeted Plan B as a feint in the right direction. With some modifications favorable to unions – the Democratic legislature shaved nearly half a billion off state worker’s “shared sacrifice,” saved municipalities the trouble of pairing down union contracts and pushed effective reform beyond the governors first term -- the General Assembly has now installed Plan A, a much less serious reform package than Plan B. Because tax payers in Connecticut have no union, there were no negotiations that might have affected the tax increases – which includes a budget surplus -- Democrats have thrown like a yoke over the citizens of the state.

THIS BLOG WAS UPDATED SATURDAY, MAY 14

Malloy Budget Passes Senate

Alleging that the budget that passed through the Connecticut state senate would lead to job creation, the ultimate goal of Democrats in the General Assembly, Gov. Dannel Malloy, seemingly pleased that his budget sailed through the senate without serious revision, thanked Senate President Don Williams, Majority Leader Marty Looney, Appropriations Chairman Toni Harp and Finance Chairman Eileen Daily in particular. “They took the budget I proposed, they made it better, and they passed it,” said Mr. Malloy in the following press release:

“The Senators who voted for this budget early this morning should be commended for making the tough decisions necessary to begin the process of getting Connecticut’s fiscal house in order. That was a tough vote to make, but it was the right vote to make. It was a vote for an honest budget, one that’s balanced with no gimmicks, and one that will stabilize the state’s finances and lead to our ultimate goal: job creation. I’d like to thank Senate President Don Williams, Majority Leader Marty Looney, Appropriations Chairman Toni Harp and Finance Chairman Eileen Daily in particular. They took the budget I proposed, they made it better, and they passed it.”

The budget, which includes the largest tax increase in state history, passed the senate by a narrow margin of 19 to 17, three Democrats -- senators Joan Hartley of Waterbury, Gayle Slossberg of Milford, and Edward Meyer of Guilford -- voting against the measure. The marathon debate on the budget ended at 3:00 in the morning. The $40.2 billion two year budget increases spending by 2.14 percent in the first year and 2.32 percent in the second year.

Republicans, who had no hand in shaping the budget hammered out by Democrats behind closed doors, said the tax increases were too high and would produce a surplus of $1 billion in the span of two years. Democrats answered that the surplus is needed to pay off debt and replenish the “rainy day fund" depleted by former Governor Jodi Rell and the Democrats, who have habitually voted for a tax increases they knew were too high. Ever since the income tax had been written into law, Connecticut’s Democratic dominated legislature and its three previous governors have used frequent billion dollar surpluses to boost an ever increasing level of spending.

One need only imagine a drunken sailor in a bar staring with steely determination at a pretty woman to have perfect picture of the effect surpluses generally have on high spenders in and outside the state legislature.

Mr. Malloy was roundly denounced by Republican leaders for having cut them out of the budget decision making process.

Noting that Mr. Malloy had dangled before them a promise of bi-partisan cooperation on the budget, Republican leader Larry Cafero concluded that the governor was “unwilling to compromise, unwilling to listen, headstrong, and not willing to be flexible. It's his way or the highway.”

Sen. Steward McKinney asked pointedly during debate on the budget, “How can you be open for business when you have a 100 percent increase on the corporate surcharge? You cannot preach and talk and scream and say we're open for business and increase the corporate surcharge. At some point, the talk is hollow and meaningless.''

Mr. Malloy’s aversion to dealing with minority Republicans in the General Assembly is reminiscent of the strategy employed by President Barack Obama in pushing through a veto proof congress contested measures that much of the country disapproved of. In a subsequent election, many of the congresspersons who hanged together with Mr. Obama later were hanged separately in the mid-term elections.

Prior to the passage of his budget in the senate, Mr. Malloy, seeking to distinguish himself from his Republican contemporary in New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie, presented his tax increases as fair and equitable. Amid measures designed to attack spending, Mr. Malloy had deployed “a new way.” Mr. Christie and, surprisingly, Democratic Governor of New York Mario Cuomo both had submitted budgets that contained no tax increases. Mr. Malloy’s budget has a massive doughnut hole in it. Although the Democratic dominated senate passed Mr. Malloy’s plan, the budget was not in balance at passage because state unions, called upon by Mr. Malloy to give back $2 billion in order to balance the budget, are still negotiating the give backs with the governor’s office.

Over in Massachusetts, once derided by nutmeggers as Taxachussetts and now called Wisconsin East, the Democratic denominated House overwhelmingly pushed through a measure that considerably reduces the political heft of unions by eliminating collective bargaining.

“It’s pretty stunning,” the president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO said. “These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected.”

The most accurate way to describe Mr. Malloy’s budget is – not stunning: It raises taxes, does not touch the wellsprings of public debt, provides the usual billion dollar surplus and is has not produced fevered objections from the free spending left, with the possible exception of uber-liberal Jonathan Pelto.

Donovan, Williams, Malloy And The Coming Crisis

Don Williams is the President Pro Tem of the state senate and one of the whip wielders of Connecticut’s Democratic caucus in the General Assembly. The other caucus leader in the state legislature is Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, once a union steward, whose affections and personal history bind him to union interests. The adamantine bonds between legislators who arrive in the General Assembly on the wings of unionism and union affiliated organizations that bring home votes to them -- especially in cities like Bridgeport and New Haven, both of which were directly responsible for Governor-elect Dan Malloy’s victory in Connecticut’s recent gubernatorial campaign – are like those between ministers of the word and their flocks. Once a union steward, always a union steward.

Unions have been good to the Democratic leadership in the General Assembly, and the leadership has been good to unions. It will continue to be so – now with a vengeance, since the Republican Party, which has a lingering affection towards businesses, has lost its negotiating posture with the General Assembly leadership. For the first time in 20 years, A Democratic governor will be the helm of state, steering our faltering ship to safe harbor. Governor Jodi Rell, it must be confessed, was never much of a “firewall” preventing the Democratic dominated legislature from raising taxes and spending. She was, at best, a pause in the rush to establish the one party state now upon us.

When Mrs. Rell leaves office, she will be taking with her the “balance” she believes is so important to good governance. For all practical purposes, the state of Connecticut has now become Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven, all one party cities. Those cities have been in disarray for as long as they have been one party operations, largely because single party entities are responsive to sectarian rather than broad state interests.

Never-the-less, Mr. Williams is optimistic, according to an Associated Press report.

True, the Tax Foundation presents a bleak picture of Connecticut’s future: Our state and municipal tax burden is the third highest in the nation; Connecticut’s 2010 Business Tax Climate Ranks 48th in the country; the state’s property tax collections per capita is the second highest nationally, behind only New Jersey; Connecticut's gasoline tax stands at 41.9 cents per gallon, the 4th highest nationally; Connecticut’s return on every dollar sent to Washington is 69 cents, the third lowest nationally; tax freedom day, that point on the calendar during which the state’s taxes obligations are satisfied, arrives yearly on April 27, the latest in the nation; and, as if all this were not disheartening enough, Connecticut’s unfunded liability, at nearly $15.9 billion, is the second-highest unfunded pension liability per capita in the country.

"Make no mistake,” Mr. Williams said, “we face significant challenges as we dig out from the economic avalanche of the national recession. But to be working with a Democratic governor, to be sharing the same basic principles and ideas, will be an experience that none of us have had in 20 years."

Republicans, noticing some of the pledges made by Mr. Malloy during his campaign, also are looking on the bright side of things, for different reasons. Senate Minority Leader John McKinney believes “there is a workable majority in this legislature, of Republicans and Democrats, who believe that we need to reduce our spending, reform our big, bloated government and get jobs back in the state of Connecticut.”

Standing between Mr. Malloy and a possible coalition government of Republicans, Independents and traditional Democrats is what might be called the permanent government: state workers determined to maintain at all cost their status and political pull; hopeful media adepts who intend through editorials and commentaries to direct the new governor’s path towards fiscal responsibility and prudent spending; progressives hopeful that Malloy will at long last relieve the tax burden on middle class workers through measures that force the rich to bear their “fair share” of state “investments” – the usual motley crew.

Overarching all this are the gathering national storm clouds. The federal government is hobbling forward, under a crushing debt burden, towards a future in which it is likely -- for the first time in our nation’s history -- that our children’s prospects will be less promising than our own. We have eaten drunk and made merry, passing to them a multi-trillion dollar bill. Having pulled all the rabbits out of its hat during our lingering recession, a spendthrift federal government now has decided to clip the horns of a prospective deflation by inflating the currency. The classic definition of inflation is: too many dollars chasing too few goods. Inflation, during which printed money is pumped into the currency stream, lowers the purchasing price of the dollar. It is a hidden tax -- poison mainlined into the nation’s bloodstream.

Whether Mr. Malloy has the courage and good sense to find a way through this inescapable briar patch and plot a successful course for Connecticut that will secure its prosperity and well being relative to other competing states is very much an open question.

Time is short, the eternity of debt long.