Rowland On A River

As the John Rowland-Brian Foley FBI investigation unfolds, it will be important to bear in mind that neither Mr. Rowland nor Lisa Wilson Foley, Brian Foley’s wife, is an active politician.

According to a report in the Register Citizen,“A federal grand jury is investigating Rowland’s connections to the 5th District Congress campaign of Lisa Wilson-Foley. Rowland worked as an “unpaid volunteer” consultant to the campaign while at the same time being paid $30,000 by Apple Rehab, a company owned by Wilson-Foley’s husband.”

Mrs. Foley is running for the U.S. Congress and has not previously held office. Mr. Rowland is a radio talk show host for (WTIC) and an ex-felon who resigned his position as governor of the state. After having pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to steal honest service, Mr. Rowland spent a year in prison and four months under house arrest. Following his release, Mr. Rowland was hired by the Waterbury Chamber of Commerce to drum up business for the city, after which he became a successful radio talk show host for WTIC-AM. Mr. Rowland lost his Waterbury position after a change of mayors.

The political disconnect means that the FBI investigation will not focus on bill-rigging, since neither of the principles mentioned by the media in connection with an FBI probe of Mr. Rowland’s business relationship with Mrs. Foley’s husband could possibly have shaped legislation. Though FBI appearances may be exceedingly misleading at the opening of an investigation, it appears that the FBI probe of Speaker of the House Chis Donovan’s office does indeed center on possible bill-rigging. Unlike Mr. Donovan, Mr. Rowland’s influence over legislation is indirect, leveraged through his radio program, the same sort of influence exerted by political columnists, editors, reporters, television news readers and talking heads.

In some overheated brains, former Governor Rowland is the devil himself; but because Mr. Rowland is not an active politician, the corrupt influence he may exert over politics in his present position is no different in kind than that of a politically influential journalist. Journalism is full of worldly scribblers who have produced copy favorable to specific politicians, afterwards moving on to work for their darlings, in the course of which they are handsomely renumerated for their efforts. Moving from the world of journalism into politics, one leaves oneself open to the charge that the prospect of employment may have affected the journalistic product.

The Berlin Wall separating politics and journalism has in it a door that opens both ways. Some former journalists have moved into politics; some politicians have traveled in the opposite direction; both have occasionally set up shop as consultants. Just as war is diplomacy by other means, so consultancy is politics by other means.

Mr. Rowland’s route -- from politics to jail to journalism –is highly unorthodox, though not unprecedented. Forced to leave office after he pummeled a gentleman he had accused of stealing the affections of his wife, former Mayor of Providence Rhode Island Buddy Cianci found a soft berth in radio broadcasting, after which he ran for governor again and won. Providence bloomed under Mr. Cianci’s hand. Ten years later he was in jail, convicted on a single charge of racketeering conspiracy. Trial Judge Ronald R. Lagueux said of Mr. Cianci, “In this mayor's two administrations, there has been more corruption in the City of Providence than in the history of this state." Upon his release from prison, Mr. Cianci once again resumed radio broadcasting.

While comparisons have been made between Mr. Rowland and Democratic Party nominee for the 23rd State Senate District Ernie Newton, both of whom served time in prison, it is important to note crucial differences.

In Connecticut, where corruption should matter more than on the national stage – because this is where we all live — Republicans can no longer appreciably shape legislative bills and budgets or distribute political patronage. Since Republicans have lost the gubernatorial slot, Connecticut has become, for all practical purposes, a one party state. And this means that the kind of corruption one associates with pol;itically active office holders lies, except in the municipalities, almost wholly in the hands of Democrats.

At present, Mr. Newton is the Democratic Party candidate for the state Senate. Objections to his candidacy on the part of Democratic leaders in the General Assembly and the governor’s office have been muted to the point of indifference. Mr. Rowland is a talk show host whose ambitions for political office almost certainly would be rebuffed by his fellow Republicans.

Some friendly Republican would do Mr. Rowland a great service were he to tap the former governor the shoulder and whisper in his ear that large amounts of money honestly arrived at cannot be had in two professions – journalism or politics. There ain’t any gold in those mines.

Newton Before Redemption

The conversation below has been lifted from Richard Bronson’s new book, “The War at the Shore,” an account of the struggle between Donald Trump and Steve Wynn over control of Atlantic City gambling interests. These words, perhaps harsh, were uttered by Ernie Newton before he ascended to Connecticut’s State Senate, according to Lennie Grimaldi, and well before Mr. Newton was carted off to prison for having accepted political bribes. Now a repentant sinner, Mr. Newton is the Democratic Party nominee for his old senate seat in Bridgeport, where else?

But for pure naked All-American avarice, the prize goes to a certain clown named Ernest Newton II, the Democratic state representative from Bridgeport …

“I have an idea,” said Ernie

“What is it?” I said.

“You lend me some money. Cash, of course, Then, I forget to pay you back? How’s that?”

“I said, Senator, I can’t do that.”

To which he replied: “Well, here’s what you can do. You can get the hell out of my office!”

Mr. Newton’s response:

“This is absolutely false, but unfortunately not surprising. When I decided to subject myself to public scrutiny again by running for office, I understood this kind of stuff comes with it.

“There are going to be plenty of people trying to tear me and my campaign down – and we know facts aren’t necessarily required. This campaign has never been about me – it’s about this community and raising the awareness of its need. The chorus of our voices will elevate that discussion while the long overdue redemption and opportunity for our community is placed in highest priority.”

Newton Reinvented

In the good old days, before the advent of campaign finance reform, a stretch in prison was no bar to election. Mayor Michael Curley of Boston, a colorful mob-connected figure in Massachusetts politics who made good on his campaign pledge to get the washerwomen of the city off their knees, ran the city from prison. Mr. Curley later rigged out all the washerwomen of Boston with long handled mops.

It may well be the case that a stretch in jail was the booster that rocketed Mr. Curley into a long and eventful career in politics.

Mr. Curley received news that he had been elected to Boston’s Board of Alderman in 1904 while cooling his heels in prison on a fraud conviction: He had fraudulently taken a civil service exam for two men applying for postmen in his district, and the stint in prison helped to burnish his reputation among the poor Irish of Boston as someone who was willing to go to the mat for those in need. During his career in politics, both as Boston Mayor and a U.S. Senator serving in the Congress from 1943 ton 1947, it was not uncommon for the city’s poor and unemployed Irish to line up outside his house in the mornings to speak with him about getting a job or to get a handout of a few dollars to see them through the week.

Running for the Congress against blue-blooded Tom Eliot, the son of a Unitarian minister, grandson of Harvard president Charles Eliot and a former New Deal attorney of sterling reputation backed by Franklin Roosevelt, Mr. Curley anchored his campaign in unvarnished appeals to ethnic, class and religious bigotry, shaking the communist spook stick against the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Yankee Eliot: “There is more Americanism in one half of Jim Curley's ass than in that pink body of Tom Eliot." Having won a spot in Congress, Mr. Curley proceeded to compile a voting record in support of the Roosevelt administration that was the envy of New Deal pinkoes everywhere.

Mr. Curley’s long political career ended in 1951 when he suffered an erosion of electoral support. Following his death, two statues honoring Mr. Curley appeared in Faneuil Hall; a bar called “The Purple Shamrock,” one of the mayor’s symbols, popped out of the ground nearby; his house, known during his time as “the house with the shamrock shutters,” became an historical site; and he was immortalized in the film “the Last Hurrah” as the protagonist, Frank Skeffington. Disappointed with the film, Mr. Curley, a shameless self-promoter but always the best guardian of his own reputation, initially threatened to bring legal action against Edwin O’Connor, the author of the novel, but on reflection thought better of it, telling Mr. O’Connor that he most enjoyed “the part where I die.”

Somewhere in Bridgeport, where the old-guard Democratic Party structure still lives and breathes, there may in the future be a spot for a couple of Ernie Newton statues.

An ex-felon and ex-State Senator from Bridgeport, Mr. Newtonsurprised Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo when he won the endorsement of the Democratic nominating convention for the 23rd State Senate District, which comprises 75 percent of Bridgeport and a bit of Stratford.

"I have to say I am surprised," Ms. DiNardo said, adding when asked by a reporter if she would discourage voters from returningMr. Newton to the General Assembly, “I think that's up to that district to make that decision, not me."

Governor Dannel Malloy, known for having in the past actively participated in the campaigns of Democrats formally nominated by his party, appeared to be consulting a similar script.

When queried by Hartford Courant reporter Jon Lender, Mr. Malloy characterized the race in Bridgeport as “local issue, first and foremost.” He urged voters in Bridgeport to “take into consideration all of the abilities of the people that they have to choose from. It looks like there may three names on the ballot. And so I think the people of Bridgeport have a decision to make. I have to say to you that I’ve long been an advocate of a second-chance society. As a prosecutor, as a governor, as a mayor I’ve advocated for second chances. But ultimately in the political arena that’s a decision for the public to make… I think the public has a balancing act. They have to decide whether … the person has paid a sufficient price, whether they’ve expressed sufficient remorse, whether they have the skill set necessary to do the job. … That’s why we have elections, and I would urge all the voters to vote.”

Mr. Newton offered a much abbreviated concision of the governor’s remarks: "The governor said, `It's the people's decision.’”

Mr. Newton launched into a defense of his record in office, minus the four years he passed in prison for having solicited a $5,000, one of three felonies he was convicted of in 2005: "Felons are people too. They can't say anything about my record in the House or Senate. It was impeccable. If people truly are forgiving, you judge a man on his work ... I paid my debt to society. I ought to be a free man to do whatever it is I want to do with my life."

He told a reporter, “Listen, I still got friends in Hartford.” His Democratic comrades in the legislature “know the (legislative) process. I'm a team player. I know how to get things done." Surely, fellow Democrats in the General Assembly and the governor’s office understand the important role Bridgeport had played in statewide elections. After all, Mr. Newton stressed, the city helped Mr. Malloy, the former mayor of Stamford, win a slim victory in 2010.

"The governor needs to get re-elected, and he's going to need my help to do it," said Mr. Newton, according to a CTPost report.

Apparently, the governor, the titular head of the Democratic Party in Connecticut, and Ms. DiNardo, the nominal head of the party, have for the moment taken a hand’s off approach to what may well be Mr. Newton’s “Last Hurrah.” Maybe they saw the movie.

The Democrats’ Rowland Problem

One would have thought that former Governor John Rowland would have been safe from criticism after he had wandered into the profession of journalism following his stint in prison for having deprived the citizens of Connecticut of honest services.

As everyone knows, journalism, in the form of gossip, is the second oldest profession in the world, following close on the heels of prostitution which, as we recently have learned, is legal in Cartagena Columbia. Prostitution in Connecticut still is illegal, though an enlightened legislature has long since legalized “gaming” (AKA gambling) in order to tax it and fill the state’s depleted treasury with money gathered by the world’s third oldest profession, politics. Journalism is the natural evolution – some would say the perfection –of gossip. Could it be possible that that the crudely drawn depictions in the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in France are first attempts at political cartooning made by the prehistoric ancestors of some politician-baiting modern relative?

Though Mr. Rowland had been for some time a member of the world’s third oldest profession, the shadow of the prison lies heavily upon him, even though Mr. Rowland, unlike Ernie Newton – the former state senator from Bridgeport who spent three years in the hoosegow for having evaded taxes and accepted bribes while in office – is not running for political office this year.

A released, rehabilitated and refurbished Mr. Newton, some commentators and reporters surmised prior to the Bridgeport nominating convention, had an even chance of being reelected to his old seat in the General Assembly, newly redesigned following redistricting and kept warm in the intervening years by state Senator Edwin Gomes. At 75 years young, Mr. Gomes, like many urban Democrats, is a magnet for union votes. Unfortunately, he has been rendered frail by recent triple bypass surgery, which opened the door to Mr. Newton, far more vigorous after his prison stay and determined to lift Bridgeport from the ashes.

Stumping in the city last January, Mr. Newton, an amateur evangelist, pithily summed up the Sermon on the Mount:“I've always lived by the philosophy that every sinner has a future and all saints have a past. I haven't been too happy with what I've seen in Bridgeport since I came home. This city needs a leader and I intend to be that person."

Entering the State Senate in 2003, Mr. Newton was appointed by then Senator Kevin Sullivan as Deputy President Pro Tempore, the third-highest leadership position in that august body of eloquent Ciceros. A booster rocket was attached to Mr. Sullivan’s own distinguished political career when he was appointed by Governor Dannel Malloy as the state’s Commissioner of Revenue Services, Connecticut’s chief tax collector. Mr. Newton’s post imprisonment ascendency is good news for Bridgeport and struggling politicians everywhere: Though the high may fall low, they easily bounce back because their nether regions are made of rubber.

As it turns out, the surmises were not farfetched. On May 21^st, Mr. Newton was chosen as the Democratic nominee for the 23rd State Senate District, an area covering about 75 percent of Bridgeport and a portion of Stratford.

From Testo’s Restaurant, moments after he was selected to represent the good people of Bridgeport in the State Senate, having snatched victory from the jaws of two non-felonious Democrats both of whom sought to deny Mr. Newton the nomination, Mr. Newton provided some moral uplift to the people of Bridgeport: “The message I am bringing to the people is that it’s time that our community redeem the great promise we have. We have too many, both young and old, that have lost the passion to fight, that have lost the belief that these communities can rise and be great. I am here as an example that our redemption is upon us. It is at our doorstep…. We need the opportunity to work. We need the opportunity to be safe. And we need the opportunity to believe again…whether it’s property taxes, continued improving relations with our police force, jobs for people in our community, cleaner streets and neighborhoods.”

It is said that Mayor Bill Finch frantically had attempted to support the nomination of State Representative Andres Ayala, young, intelligent and not a graduate from Prison U. Possibly, the mayor wanted to spare Bridgeport the contumely he feared might be in the offing from the host of Democrats and political commentators who cannot bear to mention Mr. Rowland’s name without adding the dishonorific “felon.”

When asked if she would discourage voters from returning Newton to the General Assembly, State Democratic Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo, rarely a profile in courage, replied, “I think that's up to that district to make that decision, not me."

Among politicians, Mrs. DiNardo is in the majority. Mr. Fitch is far outnumbered by those who worry that Mr. Fitch needn’t have worried.

The New European Left: Is There A Fascism In Our Future?

The New Left, both in Europe and the United States, is the old left reanimated by an economic downturn.

In France, former Trotskyite Jean-Luc Mélenchon is being pushed forward politically by a favorable communist wind at his back. It is said that M. Mélenchon’s public rallies rival those of President Nicolas Sarkozy in size and intensity.

The Financial Times reports:

“His policies, including rescinding the new EU fiscal discipline treaty, raising the minimum wage from€1,200 to €1,700 a month and confiscating all income above €360,000 a year, go far beyond even [France’s chief socialist] Mr. Hollande’s proposal to tax income above €1m at 75 percent.”

M. Mélenchon’s poll numbers have surged from 5 percent two months ago to a high of 17 per cent in more recent days, a reaction in conformity with Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion: To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.

M. Mélenchon’s recent popularity is undoubtedly a reaction to austerity measures adopted in Europe that, some suppose, will reverse a crippling economic downslide. The painful austerity measures – now imposed in stricken parts of Europe by economic and autocratic technocrats – are themselves a predictable reaction to unsustainable increases in the cost of labor.

The communist-socialist-union led opposition to austerity measures designed to reverse the European downslide should be viewed as a reaction to a reaction. Newton’s Third Law of Motion may be applied repetitively to every action-reaction sequence.

The same economic forces roiling Europe – extreme debt, unsustainable social programs, timid governments committed to preserving an enfeebling status quo, a radical disproportion between tax consumption and supply -- are blowing hot and cold here in the United States. The United States is not yet Greece or Spain or Italy, democratic governments captured by special interests in the grip of a seeming unending recession, now replaced by autocratic technicians who soon find themselves in disfavor. Austerity measures imposed by technocrats are both painful AND anti-democratic.

Much of Europe today resembles a pre-World War II theater in which Western countries nervously awaited the arrival of its various world altering saviors, a steam pot that brought forward Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Stalin in the Soviet Union. Europe is haunted today by its discredited specters. Communism has been exorcised, but its first cousin, fascism, still prowls the world, growling in China, where enterprise is brought under the domination of the state, waving cheerily in quasi-monarchist Muslim saturated Middle Eastern countries. Here at home in the United States, command economies are being carefully nurtured in left of center hot beds, and constitutional restraints upon the withering grasp of state and national governments are regarded as quaint and passé.

Passé also is a Christian infused moral consensus that has completely collapsed. One hears the moral house falling in any rap song chosen at random that entices young people to kill policemen or mutilate women; in prestigious universities that have exchanged research and study for left of center political indoctrination; in a Byzantine justice system that no longer believes in the efficacy of punishment and cannot, in some cases, even convict criminals who are clearly guilty; in racial tensions artificially induced by Elmer Gantry like ministers of the word; in the popularization of violence promoted by a morally adrift “entertainment” industry; in the rise of illegitimate births; in immodest displays of sexuality; in a suicidal birth rate that, in most of Europe, falls far short or the rate necessary to simply replace a dying and decadent civilization.

Economic disorder and end of the century moral dissolution marches hand in hand with the rise of a resurgent Islam in North Africa. The United States is exhausted – and, perhaps more importantly, disheartened – by a twenty year war in the Middle East in the course of which the country first rented out its armed services to overthrow a petty dictator and since has winked at the bloody machinations of Bashir Assad in Syria and the preposterous declarations of theocratic thugs in Iran.

The Los Angeles Times reports that a unified Western opposition to Mr. Assad is prepared to sanction Mrs. Assad by preventing her from traveling in Europe and “halting her reported spending sprees for expensive French chandeliers and candlesticks.” And just in time too. One wonders how rough-rider Teddy Roosevelt, President Barack Obama’s most recent progressive presidential hero, might have handled Assad or Iran’s development of nuclear weapons or the boy wonder of North Korea.

All this social and economic roiling portends something -- but what, exactly, no one seems to know.

Murphy And Friends

Cardinal John Henry Newman, who was violently attacked by the media of his day and responded with a more than adequate self defense, the “Apologia Pro Vita Sua,” used to say, “Throw enough dirt and some will stick – stick but not stain.” But Newman could not have been familiar with modern modes of politicking: UTube videos, blogs written by furious partisans, offshore political operations that are little more than "non-partisan" campaign finance producing operations in disguise, and sleepy eyed journalists, themselves partisan, who are willing to overlook their mud splattered political opponents.

But a bright warning line ought to be drawn somewhere.

An ad approved by embattled U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy that craftily connects Sam Caliguiri with former Waterbury Mayor Phil Giordano throws a bucket of mud on Caliguri’s reputation. Mr. Murphy’s challenger is, after all, a politician and ought not to expect to remain unbloodied in a hotly contested political campaign. Even so, the Murphy ad sets a new floor and ceiling to shameless political advertising.

Mr. Giordano is the odious mayor who was sent to prison for having had sexual relations with the daughters of a prostitute in Waterbury. The object of the Murphy ad is to hitch Caliguri to the Giordano stench, hoping that some of the odor will radiate outward to voters who may be persuaded by it to vote for the more fragrant Mr. Murphy.

The ad, “Caligiuri And Friends”  -- already denounced, but not ardently or often enough, by some reputable papers --  charges, “When Waterbury Mayor Phil Giordano went to jail for unspeakable crimes, many called for his impeachment. Instead, his Number Two man, Sam Caligiuri, negotiated a deal to allow the mayor to keep his salary and title while in prison.”

Not disclosed in the ad: 1) The negotiated settlement put Mr. Giordano in jail; 2) it spared the city, more furious with Mr. Giordano even than the slander-mongers who wrote the Murphy ad and signed off on it, the ordeal of a protracted impeachment which, while staining the city’s reputation, never-the-less would have been a political boon to Democrats; 3) most convictions for political offenses are negotiated rather than prosecuted. Such was the case with former Gov. John Rowland, former mayor of Bridgeport Joe Ganim and former Bridgeport state Rep. Ernie Newton, now out of prison and vowing to campaign for prominent Democrats in Murphy’s district; 4) Caligiuri turned Waterbury around during a trying period for the city, retiring from his position as acting mayor when his term had been fulfilled; 5 if you throw enough dirt, some will stick – stick but not stain.

Ads such as these offend the good conscience. They seek to take a strength -- Caliguiri led Waterbury through the wilderness -- and turn it into a moral deficit, at the expense of what everyone but committed partisans know to be the truth. People who endorse this junk-thought have lost all sight of the only bearing that matters. We should willingly submit to the dignity of truth, which is independent of us, and not use it as a tool of the moment to gratify our own ambitions. When truth wrapped in chains follows ambition, an honest conscience should recoil at the sight.


And it will. There are indications that people are bone weary with these fact-based truths. They want authenticity. They want the whole truth, not the half lie politicians dangle before them to purchase their votes.

The Murphy ad cannot be linked. According to a message attached to the ad on a newspaper site, it has been privatized. “This is a private video,” the message reads, “If you have been sent this video, please be sure you accept the sender’s friend request.”

Who would wish to befriend such mud slingers? As an alternative, voters who find ads such as these morally repugnant will have the opportunity to cast the sender and his friends into political oblivion on November 2.

Foley's Campaign Arrested By Reports Of Arrests

Tom Foley, the Republican Party nominee for governor, went to bed on Thursday thinking well of himself and woke up on Friday a near criminal. Two of his Republican primary opponents have called upon him in tones once used by James Cagney to “come clean” and release his arrest records.

According to a story written by Jon Lender, a superb digger and investigative reporter at the Hartford Courant, Foley was arrested 29 years ago for having bumped a car with his car. Foley was charged with first-degree attempted assault for having “rammed a vehicle, placing the occupants in fear of serious physical injury,” according to a July 2, 1981 story in the Southampton Press newspaper. The charges were later dropped.

The second arrest involved a dispute with his wife during what is described as a messy divorce. In politics, divorces are a dime a dozen, though not always messy. Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker, for instance, shed about half as many wives as Henry VIII, apparently without incident. U.S. Senators Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman were both divorced and re-married. Unlucky in divorce, if not in love – Foley and his second wife are expecting the birth of a child soon – the gubernatorial hopeful found himself, one day nearly three decades ago, remonstrating with his soon to be divorced wife over their son. Both were arrested. The charges later were dropped.

Unlike other Connecticut pols who spent a good amount of time in the slammer – Phil Giordano, the mayor of Waterbury who molested young girls in his office, or Joe Ganim, the mayor of Bridgeport, who was remunerated for political favors, or state senator Ernest Newton, convicted of receiving a bribe and using campaign contributions as a private piggy bank, or Governor John Rowland, who sold his office for a mess of pottage – Foley cooled his heels in jail for only one night while awaiting the arrival of a lawyer next day. Both his arrests were the result of personal rather than political misbehavior.

There are as yet two unanswered questions: 1) Should Foley release to the media his arrest records? He should, unless the release of the records will disturb other legal arrangements he has made with his former wife. Why bait the sharks if there is no harmful skeleton locked away in the records? And 2) Did the information received by Lender come from some other politician who has an interest in the gubernatorial race?

Lender offers a tantalizing tidbit concerning the provenance of the story. The records obtained by the Courant were not given to the paper by Foley’s ex-wife. They were included in a mass of documents assembled during the administration of former governor Rowland – and were ferried from the gubernatorial office by whom?

We may never know, even if Foley does arrange to release the arrest records, as has been suggested by nearly every contender for the gubernatorial slot, all of whom would stand to benefit from the release.

A few weeks ago, a damaging report published by the New York Times concerning Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s fraudulent claims of service in Vietnam were partially softened by reports in the press that some of the information had been shuttled to the Times by the Linda McMahon campaign. Apparently the provenance of information does matter, at least when the reports tell against Democrats favored by Connecticut’s liberal media.

Those who stand to benefit immediately from the release of the records are present Lieutenant Governor Mike Fedele and Oz Griebel, both running for governor as Republicans. Waiting in the wings ready to pounce are Dan Malloy and Ned Lamont, Democrat gubernatorial hopefuls. Foley has characterized the Lender story as fair, well written and comprehensive. No other vital information, he insists, would be forthcoming from a release of the arrect reports. So far, Foley has told his political opponents to go take a hike, but the clamor for the release of the documents is still in its larval stage.