The Permanent Opposition

On April 5^th, a year after Connecticut’s predominantly Democratic General Assembly had passed into law the most restrictive gun legislation in the nation, opponents of the legislation rallied on the North side of the Capitol in Hartford.

The event was well attended: Capitol police estimated the crowd at 3,000; those hosting the event, the Connecticut Citizens Defense League (CCDL), placed the figure at 5,000. None of those present at the rally had been called upon by the General Assembly to offer testimony on the final bill, which itself was billed as an adequate and necessary response to a mass slaying at the Newtown Sandy Hook Elementary School. The final bill was passed without a public hearing by a legislature operating in the absence of information contained in a much too delayed criminal investigation.

Governor Dannel Malloy – once a prosecutor who, Mr. Malloy has often said, had tried criminal cases – declared at the time that the data contained in the criminal report was quite unnecessary; Mr. Malloy and the legislature knew enough about the events surrounding the massacre at Sandy Hook to write legislation that would in the future serve to prevent such occurrences everywhere in the state. The gun regulation bill would advance the public safety, the public was assured, public safety being the primary responsibility of both national and state governments.

That was not all the governor said. Early on, Mr. Malloy, the complete politician from head to toe, seemed to understand, almost intuitively, that gun regulation might be a useful prop in the coming political campaign. Indeed, Mr. Malloy’s campaign howitzer was pointed directly at the National Rifle Association (NRA), what he regards as unreasonable defenders of the U.S. Constitution’s 2^nd Amendment, Tea Party zanies and -- a bit surprising for the head of a state that has produced few jobs since 1991 -- gun manufacturers in what had been called since the American Revolution “the provision state.” Not only gun manufacturers but large corporations such as Pratt&Whitney still provide the U.S. government with war material. Even now, Connecticut is, to turn a phrase coined by Mr. Malloy, “still revolutionary.”

And yet here was the governor of a still revolutionary state telling gun manufacturers that they cared only for profits. “What this is about,” Mr. Malloy said on one of his frequent national television appearances, “is the ability of the gun industry to sell as many guns to as many people as possible -- even if they are deranged, even if they are mentally ill, even if they have a criminal background. They don’t care. They want to sell guns” -- meaning the flinty hearts of gun manufacturers did not bleed for the innocent victims of a mass murder in Sandy Hook. These sub-humans were interested only in filthy lucre.

Compassion for the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, the people of Connecticut were to understand, was a rare and tender emotion cherished only by politicians such as Mr. Malloy and U.S. Senators Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, all of whom were determined to blunt the outsized influence of the NRA. To date, more than a year after the slayings, Connecticut Senators Blumenthal and Murphy have not been successful in persuading U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to bring a gun restriction bill before the Democratic controlled Senate. We are given to understand that Mr. Reid is not uncompassionate; he simply lacks votes in the Democratic controlled chamber to pass a measure mirroring Connecticut’s highly restrictive gun law.

It is the insulting obduracy of Mr. Malloy and Mr. Murphy in particular  – Mr. Blumenthal has been slightly more cautious in his language – that has created what is now a permanent political opposition Connecticut. The trick in politics always is to slide your proposals, particularly pointless ones, past the noses of those deleteriously affected by them, not to bash them with inept demagoguery. Mr. Murphy and Mr. Malloy have made it impossible for their most virulent opponents to shrug off their persistent attacks as political posturing, the principal aim of which is to attract votes.

The CCDL rally in Harford, four months in the making, was by any measure a success. The large crowd -- rallying around the U.S. and State Constitutions, the flag and what they consider misguided legislation -- were animated and goal directed: Their goal, of course, was to flush anti-constitutional demons from the building they faced and to prevent further legislative encroachments on liberties hard won by the architects of the American Republic. The statues of the founders of Connecticut looked down upon them from the heights of the building. Quotes from Jefferson and Madison adorned their signs. There were scores of women and children in the crowd -- and out of state participants from New Jersey, New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Mississippi, West Virginia, about a dozen states in total, according to CCDL organizers. Most of the speakers mentioned, in one way or another, the bountiful fruits of a politics of limits: Governments were not created to put men in chains, but rather to permit men and women to guard with their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor the God given fruits of liberty heralded in the founding documents.

Newtown, Who Knew?

Danbury State’s Attorney Stephen Sedensky has been keeping information concerning the mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School close to his vest, and state police spokesman Lieutenant Paul Vance has countless times told everyone in Connecticut why: “There is an ongoing investigation.”

The criminal investigation has been ongoing ever since Adam Lanza, armed to the teeth with weapons he appropriated from his mother, shot his way into the school and murdered 20 young children and 6 staff members. Mr. Lanza also murdered his mother before leaving on his murderous mission.

Right from the get-go, the General Assembly was bum rushed by Governor Dannel Malloyand Democratic legislative leaders into producing a gun restriction bill in the absence of vital information then in the possession of Mr. Sedensky. And whenever Connecticut reporters were so bold as to ask Mr. Vance for information concerning the slayings, they were told they would have to wait for the criminal report because “the criminal investigation was ongoing.”

And ongoing… and ongoing… and ongoing…

After the General Assembly had signed off on a gun bill said to be among the most restrictive in the nation, and after a promised criminal report release date of mid-March had passed, and after a promised release date of mid-June had passed, and after state police had spilled some of the Sandy Hook beans at a conference in New Orleans, grievously disappointing Mr. Malloy, and after Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional Delegation had failed to persuade Majority Leader Harry Reid to bring up a much watered down gun restriction bill in the U.S. Senate, and after an arrest warrant was finally teased from the holders of the Sandy Hook secrets, and, most recently, after a crime squad leader in the criminal investigation  appeared in conferences across the fruited plains -- but, significantly, not in Connecticut -- disgorging information that can only be considered compromising to an ongoing investigation, after all this bilge has passed under the noses of Connecticut’s media, some folk in the mainstream media are now beginning to get just a touch antsy.

Why can’t state criminal investigators share with the people in Connecticut – and Sandy Hook – the information they have disclosed in, among other places, Maine, Michigan, Nashville, Tennessee, Dallas Texas and Billings, Montana?

This is more than sad. It is more than an insult to the parents of victims in Sandy Hook.

Governor Malloy wants Newtown to distribute victim funds held in reserve for future contingencies to the parents of children slain in Sandy Hook and close out the funding account. Newtown officials, from the very first, wanted to leave some money in reserve for, as Newtown resident Maryann Murtha put it in a recent letter imploring Mr. Malloy not to disturb decisions made about funding at the local level, “short and long term community needs.”

“And now, at the 11th hour,” Ms. Murtha wrote, “U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal have jumped on the bandwagon, even though their jurisdiction is questionable at best.

“At this point, more than two-thirds of the $11.7 million is going directly to the families of those who died, the two injured and the 12 first-graders who survived the attack on their classrooms. The governor wants the ‘account closed.’ Is this for political gain? How does he know what the timeline should be?”

This is a governor who knows how to get what he wants. And Mr. Malloy does not want the criminal investigation closed, so long as an open investigation remains politically useful.

Danbury State Attorney Sedensky should congratulate himself on his ability to parse words.

Way back in March, attempting to staunch leaks in the media that might have compromised his continuing investigation, Mr. Sedensky issued instructions “that any and all such presentations involving evidence in the criminal investigation be ceased while the investigation is pending and my report is still outstanding.”

Mr. Sedensky has previewed the police presentations given out in several states and is certain that presenters “are not talking about the investigation. They will be talking about logistics and victim control, which is different than talking about details of the investigation.'' And Mr. Malloy has given his imprimatur to the state police: “All they are doing is sharing some of the procedural lessons that were learned that terrible day.”

Neither Mr. Sedensky nor Mr. Malloy has indicated when a similar presentation will be scheduled at the conference center in Hartford. 

Mr. Sedensky and Mr. Malloy, both lawyers, might have come in handy during the High Middle Ages, when theologians were discussing how many angels could fit on the head of a pin.

The legislation inspired by the assault on those poor school children should have followed a complete criminal investigation. A précis of the criminal report could have been made available to the relevant committee chairmen in camera when the General assembly sat, months after the bloody assault in Sandy Hook, to construct legislation designed to prevent such school invasions in the future. But the General Assembly was in a rush to get the cart improperly placed before the horse. During this process, neither God nor all the angels in Heaven were permitted to interfere with the political chest puffing of Connecticut’s two U.S. Senators, the governor, Mr. Sedensky or the state police – some of whom, one hopes, were drafted as unwilling accomplices in the vastly entertaining political show.

Murphy Among the Lilliputians

Seasoned members of the U.S. Senate may be forgiven if they think U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, elected to the Senate only five months ago, is a bit of an upstart. It is an unwritten rule in that august body that newly arrived Senators should be seen but not heard until they’ve paid their dues for a year.

In the past two years, Connecticut lost two Senators of longstanding, Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman, who were replaced by Democrats Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, both of whom in the last six months have been vigorously pressuring their brethren to vote into law a much watered down version of Connecticut’s recently adopted gun law.

These efforts, so far, have been unavailing.  Two months have passed since Speaker of the U.S. Senate Harry Reid announced that he declined to bring up for a vote in the Democratic controlled Senate a bill that would require background checks for gun purchasers.

In response to the horrific mass murder of children and staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut’s General Assembly quickly passed a gun bill widely regarded as the most restrictive in the nation, possibly outflanking Chicago, the murder capital of the Republic.

There is some reason to believe that the final gun bill in Connecticut was speedily passed -- far in advance of the completion of a criminal report on the Sandy Hook mass murder and without benefit of a final public hearing on the measure – so that the Connecticut legislation might be showcased in Washington D.C. prior to a pending vote on a national gun bill.

If so, the effort failed. Mr. Reid, convinced he could not marshal sufficient votes in the Senate to pass a bill infinitely less restrictive than the Connecticut legislation, recently declined to bring the bill before the Senate for a vote.

Governor Dannel Malloy -- who said concerning his state’s gun manufacturers as Connecticut’s gun restriction bill was being forced through the General Assembly’s sausage making machine, "What this is about is the ability of the gun industry to sell as many guns to as many people as possible, even if they're deranged, even if they're mentally ill, even if they have a criminal record. They don't care” – was of course disappointed that a much weaker national gun restriction bill had failed to pass muster in the Democratic controlled U.S. Senate. And Connecticut’s two cloutless U.S.Senators were sorely frustrated. Both Mr. Blumenthal, now the state’s senior senator, and Mr. Murphy publically lashed out at the National Rifle Association (NRA) and their weak-kneed comrades in the Senate whom they understood to be hanging limply from puppet strings attaching them to NRA campaign contributions.

Either of Connecticut’s now departed U.S. Senators might have told the two novice senators that such public intimations are no way to win friends and influence comrades in what some have called the world’s greatest deliberative body. Are Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Murphy prepared to argue that Harry Reid, the Democratic Speaker of the Senate, is a mindless puppet of the NRA?

Well, are they?

Mr. Murphy in particular moves from rashness to rashness the way a flitting pollen collecting bee moves briskly from flower to flower. Along with U.S. Senator Jon Tester, Mr. Murphy – having danced a public jig over the grave of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment – has now proposed to add to the Constitution an amendment that would, according to some Constitutional scholars, “authorize Congress, states, and local governments to, for instance, restrict what most newspapers publish, restrict what most advocacy groups, such as the ACLU, the Sierra Club, and the NRA say, restrict what is said and done by most churches, and seize the property of corporations without just compensation.”

Here is Mr. Murphy’s proposed amendment:

Section 1. We the people who ordain and establish this Constitution intend the rights protected by this constitution to be the rights of natural persons.

Section 2. The words people, person, or citizen as used in this Constitution do not include corporations, limited liability companies or other corporate entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state, and such corporate entities are subject to such regulation as the people, through their elected State and Federal representatives, deem reasonable and are otherwise consistent with the powers of Congress and the States under this Constitution.

 

Section 3. Nothing contained herein shall be construed to limit the people’s rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free exercise of religion, freedom of association and all such other rights of the people, which rights are unalienable

The Murphy amendment is a thoughtless and juvenile reaction to a Supreme Court holding that the rights and immunities of the U.S. Constitution should continue to apply to corporate entities. Mr. Murphy’s own state, one of the 13 original colonies, was founded as a royal chartered corporation. Constitutional scholar Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, noted that “corporate entities,” include most media companies, nonprofit groups, and religious organizations. “Under the proposed amendment, all these groups—as well as ordinary businesses—would lose all their constitutional rights.”

Connecticut’s junior U.S. Senator appears to be determinedly working his way through the Bill of Rights in an attempt to purge it of its ancient excrescences. One can almost hear him ticking off the list: Second Amendment, done; First Amendment, done. For progressive utopianists unwilling to acknowledge a politics of limits, not even the rational limits imposed by constitutions, the sky is always the limit.

The Shameless Dick Blumenthal

U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, for 20 years Attorney General in Connecticut, has approved many a press release in his day. Indeed, he may have underwritten most among the flood of media releases issued in his name before leaving his cushy spot as Attorney General and becoming a member of the U.S. Senate club. While in college at Harvard, he was the editor of the Harvard Crimson and reported on several key stories of the day, among them a trial in New Haven of Black Panther terrorists.

Over a long period in the public eye, Mr. Blumenthal has acquired certain journalistic talents, which have aided him in cranking out emotionally appealing lede paragraphs.

Here are the first three graphs of a column written by Mr. Blumenthal and printed in a Hartford paperfollowing the defeat in the U.S. Senate of a very mild, almost inoffensive, bill that would have required background checks for gun purchases:

“On Wednesday, the Senate said no to America. But the American people will not take no for an answer.

“The first words I heard when Vice President Joe Biden banged the gavel to end the vote Wednesday on the gun purchasing background check bill were, ‘Shame on you.’ They were from a rightfully angry mother of a Virginia Tech student who, six years ago this week, was shot twice in the head. This heartbroken mother had the courage to say what all of us fighting for background checks and other common-sense gun laws were feeling.

“It was a shameful day for our nation.”

One may assume as a matter of course that anyone who opposes Mr. Blumenthal is shameful, but the man who shamelessly lied about his non-service in Vietnam was not alone in his aspersions. In the course of a few hours, everyone was sounding the same toscin, including the visibly angry president and vice president. But it was not a shameful day for Mr. Blumenthal, who placed himself on the shameless side of the bill. Along with U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, Mr. Blumenthal took the lead in the Senate agitating for passage of the doomed bill. In his home state, Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Murphy lent their prestige as U.S. Senators to a successful effort in passing a gun restriction bill that has been described approvingly by its proponents as the toughest gun restriction bill in the nation, outpacing even Chicago, murder capital of the United States.

To his credit, Mr. Blumenthal knocked, if only by implication, his Democratic confreres in the Senate. The Senate needed four more Democratic votes to pass a much watered down version of Connecticut’s strongest in the nation gun restriction bill; and, as it happened, four Democrats in the Democratic controlled chamber voted against the measure. If shame could have been apportioned in the Senate, the four deserters should have received the largest portion of it. Lacking the four necessary votes, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid – who also voted against the measure – pulled the bill. Mr. Reid said he hadn’t voted for the measure on the floor so that he might vote against it later. The other three Democratic Senators who voted against the measure, Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Murphy would have us believe, did so because they were palsied with fear owing to almost certain campaign opposition from the National Rifle Association (NRA), which both Mr. Murphy and Mr. Blumenthal have characterized as a toothless and very much overrated paper tiger.

In comparison with the gun restriction bill passed in Connecticut, the bill withdrawn by Mr. Reid may accurately be compared to a paper tiger; which is another way of saying that the bill, had it passed through Congress as written, would not have addressed the root causes of the mass shootings that occurred both in Sandy Hook and on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, 15 years ago, when a senior at the school, Seung-Hui Cho, shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others in two separate attacks about two hours apart before committing suicide, still the deadliest shooting incident by a single gunman in U.S. history.

Following an exhaustive investigation, it was determined that Virginia Tech, owing to federal privacy laws, was unaware that Mr. Cho had received special education support while in high school, that he had been accused of stalking two female students, that he had suffered from an anxiety disorder and that a Virginia special justice had declared Mr. Cho mentally ill, ordering him to attend treatment, an order disregarded by his mother. The bill supported by Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Murphy that went down to dusty defeat in the U.S. Senate did not strum any mental illness chords; it did not substantially alter previous legislation that prevented Virginia Tech from acquiring access to medical information available to high school administrators; it was simply a bill intended to close a gap in background checks.

The rejected bill provided little more than an addendum to a largely unenforced bill already on the books, H.R.2640, the provisions of which have been studiously ignored even in Connecticut, which may now boast that it has the toughest gun regulations, rarely to be enforced, in the nation. The bill defeated in Washington was little more than a Potemkin Village front that may in the future serve as political luster to politicians seeking office. Mr. Blumenthal should have been ashamed to prop up the farce.

Sandy Hook Is Waiting

Following a reasonable complaint from Republican leaders in the General Assembly that they lack sufficient data to write legislation that will assure people in Connecticut – and most especially the people of Sandy Hook – that massacres of the kind that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School will not be repeated, Governor Dannel Malloy, who does not take kindly to critical objections, responded with a media release.

“Like many others,” Mr. Malloy wrote, “I was disappointed and angered to learn that certain information about the Newtown shooting had been leaked, specifically with concern for the victims' families who may have been hearing this news for the first time.”

Does Mr. Malloy truly think that the leaked information provided in a Daily News report by Mike Lupica will irreparably compromise the criminal investigation under way by the Chief State’s Attorney and other law enforcement officials?

Mr. Malloy does not seem especially anxious for an answer to this question. But the question is an important one because, depending on the answer to it, reasonable people, news reporters among them, might be able to determine for themselves whether or not the shroud of secrecy surrounding the mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School should be lifted so as to allow legislators to write rational and effective bills.

The Chief State’s Attorney has not indicated as a result of the data he has so far assembled that any prosecutions are pending. Adam Lanza, a quite efficient killer, managed to murder 20 school children, 6 staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School and his own mother. There has been some speculation, so far not supported by hard data, that Mr. Lanza’s mother might have been partly responsible for the mayhem by failing to render inaccessible four of the weapons Mr. Lanza carried with him to the school. Indeed, most of the information people in Connecticut and elsewhere have been regurgitating from media reports remains unverified. A final criminal report, we are told, will be completed sometime in June.

The Chief State’s Attorney likely will not prosecute Adam Lanza, because he is dead. His mother likewise is unavailable for questioning. Questions cannot be wrested from any of the brave and heroic school personnel who, unarmed, died in heroic attempts to frustrate Mr. Lanza’s murderous assault. Indeed, should some curious news reporter ask Mr. Malloy, a former prosecutor, who the Chief State’s Attorney intends to prosecute for this heinous crime, what names could he mention?

Until the New Orleans leak, the iron curtain of secrecy surrounding the massacre in Sandy Hook was impenetrable, and in the absence of verified information, speculation and rumor have been rampant. However, it may not seem to most reporters that the data tightly under wraps and released by Mr. Lupica would compromise the ongoing investigation by the Chief State’s Attorney and others closely connected with federal personnel, nor has the Chief State’s Attorney suggested as much.

Following criticism from leading data-starved legislators in the General Assembly, Mr. Malloy wrote in his media release:

“Today, my office contacted the Chief State’s Attorney. I requested, and they have agreed, to release additional information relevant to the investigation and to provide a status on where the investigation currently stands. This information will be provided by Friday, March 29.

“As to what information can reasonably be shared at this time – that is a question that must be left to the State’s Attorney and other law enforcement. As a former prosecutor, I’m sensitive to the need for an independent investigation and believe that we must allow their work to continue without any undue interference.

“Having said all that, I will also say that I am bewildered by the demands of Mr. Cafero and others for a special briefing they claim is necessary in order for them to take a firm position on potential legislative responses to this horrific tragedy.

“To Mr. Cafero and those others I must ask: what more could you possibly need to know?

It might be considered unbusiness-like for Mr. Cafero to respond, “We need to know more than Mike Lupica if we are expected to write rational legislation that will, as Mr. Malloy and members of Connecticut’s U.S Congressional delegation have insisted, prevent future Sandy Hook-like school invasions.” At the very least Mr. Cafero should busy himself making a list of relevant questions the answers to which might aid the General Assembly in writing pertinent legislation.

All available information should be released to legislative bodies considering relevant bills. It borders upon insanity to expect reasonable legislation from legislators not in possession of the data they need to write the legislation. If it is determined that the information – including Hippa information – will compromise the investigation, that data may be received by relevant committees in camera. If current Hippa regulations prevent the sharing of medical data with legislators who need the data to write bills, change the regulations. Legislators – and the governor -- should have been insisting on briefings and updated briefings all along. It is the lack of hard and accurate data that has slowed the legislative process. No more dawdling! The people of Sandy Hook deserve better than this.

By the way, would it not be proper for U.S. Senator Chris Murphy and other Democrats on Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional delegation to direct some of the rhetorical fire aimed at the demonized NRA towards Democrats in the U.S. Senate. Senate leader Harry Reid could not muster enough votes in a body controlled by Democrats to pass an assault rifle ban: Connecticut has one. This commentator reads media reports sedulously, and he cannot recall any of the members of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation, all Democrats, being invited to express their dismay concerning the withdrawal of the assault weapons ban bill by Senate leader Harry Reid. These are the very people, Mr. Malloy among them, who stood shoulder to shoulder with groups in Newtown that were demanding an assault weapons ban from President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress.

What flower pots are they hiding behind now?

What Republicans Can Do

Nationally, most Republican election analysts called it wrong. Moments following the election,Dick Morris repented in sackcloth and ashes. He had missed something that one might call the New Democratic Majority, which is on the order of missing Gibraltar while sailing the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula:
 

“By the time you finish with the various demographic groups the Democrats win, you almost have a majority in their corner. Count them: Blacks cast 13% of the vote and Obama won them 12-1. Latinos cast 10% and Obama carried them by 7-3. Under 30 voters cast 19% of the vote and Obama swept them by 12-7. Single white women cast 18% of the total vote and Obama won them by 12-6. There is some overlap among these groups, of course, but without allowing for any, Obama won 43-17 before the first married white woman or man over 30 cast their vote. (Lets guess that if we eliminate duplication, the Obama margin would be 35-13) Having conceded these votes, Romney would have had to win over two-thirds of the rest of the vote to win. He almost did. But not quite.”

Behold the New Democratic Majority – Blacks, Latinos, voters under 30 and single white women allured by Obama’s promise of a Planned Parenthood abortion center in every pot.

Sean Trende’s analysis in Real Clear Politics is much different than Morse’s. Trende does not deny the importance of capturing neglected minorities but, he points out, Romney’s challenge suffered most from a lack of white voters.

The imminent arrival of what Republicans used to call, a note of disapproval in their tone, the Nanny State -- a federal government octopus that wipes every tear with dollars taken from the idle rich while directing the flow of business in what has been quaintly called the private economy -- is supposed to hold this alliance together.

Parts of the alliance will fall away as the country limps along on crutches that date from the election of 1912, the high tide of the Progressive assault on common sense and the entrepreneurial spirit of the country. One likes to think that the powers of resistance of the average American to warmed over socialist schemes floating in the brain of Eugene Debs will survive the next four years in good repair; we are not Venezuela yet, even though Hugo Chavez, along with the progressive President of Russia Vladimir Putin, has given the thumbs up to Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, all promoters of the New Democratic Majority. The New Democratic Majority has been forged in the crucible of Chicago politics. Whether all or some of its component parts will survive after Mr. Obama and Mr. Axelrod leave the scene is very much an open question.

On the home front, Connecticut, far more than the national government, has become a one-party state. The template for the one party state may be found both in Venezuela and Connecticut’s major cities, Bridgeport serving as the state’s Ohio. As Connecticut’s major cities go, so goes the state.

Polls show that Dannel Malloy, the first Democratic governor in Connecticut since the administration of former Governor William O’Neill and the architect of the largest tax increase in state history, remains unpopular. However, voters who prefer an“Anyone but Malloy” candidate in 2014 may be looking at a “No Exit” sign. The governor has put together his own “New Connecticut Democratic Majority.” And the way in which his last budget was passed leaves little room for doubt that Mr. Malloy can cobble together a tax and spending plan without including the state’s Republican minority in the General Assembly. The architects of Connecticut’s last budget were Malloy and his Malloyalists, a Democratic majority in the General Assembly that pre-approved Mr. Malloy’s first budget and then invested the governor with plenipotentiary powers to readjust it, and state unions, dubbed by this writer at the time as Connecticut’s “third political party.”

Connecticut Democrats need surpluses to keep tax consumers well fed and to convince those unfamiliar with the way economies actually perform in the real world that the governor can easily create jobs by giving away millions in tax dollars to large profitable companies adept at crony capitalist bribery.

The jobs Mr. Malloy has claimed to produce in Connecticut do not grow on a jobs tree in the governor’s mansion adjacent to the money tree from which the governor, the Malloyalists and Democratic progressives in the state legislature pluck their millions to support grateful crony capitalists. Every dollar consumed in Connecticut taxes is a bucket of water taken from the deep end of the pool and poured into the shallow end by political shysters who hope to convince a majority of voters that the operation will increase the net amount of water in the pool, thus opening the door to unparalleled prosperity.

The surpluses Democrats will need to perpetuate this political fraud must come from somewhere, and taxpayers in Connecticut, already saddled with the largest tax increase in state history, cannot afford further increases – which means Mr. Malloy and the Democrats will do one of two things come budget time: either slash spending deeply, not likely, or pass on the tax burden to municipalities by cutting state support.

The loyal opposition in the General Assembly should begin soon to confront the imposture. They have only their chains to lose, and a world to win.

Democrats on the nuclear option

The best arguments against the so called nuclear option, widely considered as a measure that might be useful in passing the health care initiatives of President Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid and the better angels of Hillary Clinton’s nature were made in 05 by the politicos mentioned above. The warning issued by now Vice President Joe Biden is especially chilling.