The Trials Of John Rowland

Former Governor John Rowland, now a former radio talk show host, may have been “guilty,” in a metaphorical sense, of using his position to advance the political interest of one particular candidate over another. It has been said that Mr. Rowland had subjected poor Andrew Roraback, at the time a Republican Party candidate for the U.S. House in the 5th District, to a severe interrogation on his radio program, formerly called “Church And State.” Since being appointed to Connecticut’s Superior Court by Governor Dannel Malloy, Mr. Roraback has moved out of the political into the less contentious judicial arena. Apparently, Mr. Roraback had suffered no permanent harm, and losing a Hartford Courant endorsement to his Democratic opponent certainly cost the socially progressive Republican Party endorsed candidate more negative votes than Mr. Rowland’s barbed questions.

Mr. Rowland’s preferred candidate for the slot, it has been said, was Lisa Wilson Foley. At the time Mr. Rowland was hard grilling Mr. Roraback, the talk show host was employed as a consultant for Apple Rehab, a business owned by Mrs. Foley’s husband. Mr. Rowland implausibly claims he was assisting Mrs. Foley’s campaign on the side as an “unpaid consultant.”

Similar impostures – though news of them may shock the willfully ignorant – have been deployed in the news business from time immemorial. Abe Lincoln came very near to fighting a duel with one of his outraged political competitors when it was discovered that editorials in a Republican paper had been written on the sly by Mr. Lincoln; actually, one of the newspaper pieces had been written by his intended wife. Because it would have been ungentlemanly for Mr. Lincoln to involve his fiancée in the quarrel, he accepted responsibility for the satires but characteristically refused to issue an apology. Eventually, the matter was settled outside the law courts, without either of the antagonist having used against each other the large military broadswords Mr. Lincoln had selected as his choice of weapon. Mr. Lincoln, who towered over his opponent, hacked off a tree branch with his sword while the two stood facing each other on Blood Island, and the display of superior reach led to an amicable resolution.

In Lincoln’s day, newspapers were outrageously partisan, little more than party organs. In our day, newspapers are slyly partisan. If subtle partisanship were a crime, Connecticut prisons would be overflowing with journalists and editorial writers.

Charlie Morse, for many years the chief political writer for the Hartford Courant and an unabashed Weicker-liker, produced tons of columns favorable to then Senator Lowell Weicker, one of the papers most pampered political pets. The Courant, during Mr. Weicker’s push for an income tax, was solidly in Mr. Weicker’s gubernatorial corner. Before Mr. Weicker had been sworn in as governor, Mr. Morse accepted an offer from Mr. Weicker to work for him while continuing to write for the paper for a few weeks. After his inauguration, Mr. Morse left the Courant and began working for Mr. Weicker. There is no indication that Mr. Morse was being paid for his fawning columns. Some writers do it for love, others for money.

The Courant, a left of center publication, supported Mr. Weicker because its editors regarded the “Maverick” Republican as a sort of Jack the Giant Killer. “Maverick” was the title of Mr. Wicker’s “fact based” autobiography, most adequately reviewed by Journal Inquirer columnist Chris Powell under the title “Mr. Bluster Saves The World.” While Mr. Weicker and the editorial board of the Courant were synergistically attached at their navels, little did the Courant understand that Mr. Weicker was not killing the giant; there were NO conservative Republicans in office in Connecticut at the time. He was killing Jack -- his own Connecticut based Republican Party.  

There are no laws criminalizing journalistic bad habits.  The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects partisan and non-partisan journalists alike. Even if the accusation against Mr. Lincoln had been correct, he easily could have won his case in court by draping across his chest the breastplate of The First Amendment – or at least that portion of it that guarantees freedom of political speech. The freedom of religious expression clause in the very same amendment is not as hotly defended by the media because modern journalism tends to be instinctively anti-clerical. Some of us who understand why a watchful media should resist authoritarian displays of power cannot for the life of us understand why the same media should be so willing to bed down with grey headed incumbents whose first term in office coincided with the arrival of Noah’s Arc on Mount Ararat. Surely in our day, incumbent politicians are much more powerful than the ministers and priests who now preside over Gary Wills’ “Bare Ruined Choirs.”

Though Mr. Rowland’s defense attorneys have focused of the charges brought against him in a motion to dismiss, the First Amendment conceivably could be brought into play as a sleeper defense during the promised Rowland trial -- “promised” because it is always possible the trial may be ditched in favor of some plea agreement never made public between Mr. Rowland’s high priced Washington attorneys and prosecutors. Neither Mr. Rowland nor Mrs. Wilson-Foley were practicing politicians at the time Mr. Rowland, essentially a journalist, allegedly “favored” Mrs. Wilson-Foley, an aspiring politician, on his radio program. This means that no political favors either way could have been exchanged for allegedly “corrupt” money received by Mr. Rowland.

It is still very early in “the judicial process.” During Lincoln’s day, matters were adjudicated in courts of law, and instructive precedents were established. Nowadays, justice itself hangs from “process” nooses. Deals are made in private between Star Chamber prosecutors and defense lawyers, and precedence is a stranger at the hidden proceedings. Grand Juries, many political commentators understand, are Star Chamber proceedings, and Grand Jury findings released to the media are always highly prejudicial. They should be taken by a truly non-partisan critical media with tons of salt.

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.

McKinney’s Endorsement Of Greenberg

By endorsing Mark Greenberg’s candidacy for the U.S. Congress in Connecticut’s 5^th District, a seat now held by U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty, state senate leader John McKinney has tossed a wrench into the political machinery.

Mr. McKinney is an announced candidate for governor, a position now held by Governor Dannel Malloy, the first Democratic chief executive in more than 20 years and the nominal head of his party.

The march to Washington through the 5^th District has been traveled before by Mr. Greenberg. At the 2012 Republican nominating convention, Mr. Greenberg was a contender for the position, which ultimately fell to then state Senator Andrew Roraback who, following his loss to Ms. Esty, was appointed a superior court judge by Mr. Malloy. Mr. Greenberg endorsed Mr. Roraback. The Democratic contenders at the time were Ms. Esty and then Speaker of the State House of Representatives Chris Donovan, whose campaign was derailed when the FBI moved to arrest Mr. Donovan’s campaign finance manager and others associated with his campaign. A moderate Republican who was liberal on social issues, Mr. Roraback lost to Ms. Esty by less than 7,500 votes.

Mr. McKinney’s endorsement of Mr. Greenberg was immediately denounced by state Democrats in terms that mesh nicely with an effort on the part of national Democrats to tie Republican candidates to the U.S. Congress to the Tea Party, regarded by many Democratic strategists as an anvil that, once effectively fastened to the neck of any Republican running for office, would be certain to sink a campaign.

In the national campaign script, written for the most part by left of center progressives, the Tea Party is treated as a devilish institution. It was uber-propagandist V. I. Lenin who said that if you label something effectively, you don’t have to argue with it, and there are some who believe that Beltway script writers and labelers set a standard for political skulduggery when national agencies answerable to the executive department, such as the putatively non-partisan Internal Revenue Service (IRS), set out to frustrate conservative-minded groups by means of contrived and corrupt investigations. Last May, the internal auditor for the IRS reported that the agency had asked inappropriately probing questions and delayed conservative groups’ applications — in some cases for three years.

The Tea Party in Connecticut is a convenient campaign foil for Democratic Party leaders. During the last Jefferson, Jackson, Bailey gathering, Mr. Malloy singled out the Tea Party, took aim and fired: “They don’t give a darn about our economy. They would sink our economy for their own political good.”

Mr. Malloy would be hard pressed to name a single representative of the Tea Party in Connecticut. Certainly he has never invited any member of the Tea Party in in his state over to the governor’s mansion to have a beer summit on the state’s sinking economy, though Mr. Malloy has now been given the opportunity. Following the governor's strained attempt at Tea Party labeling, Bob MacGuffie, the co-founder of Right Principles, a conservative-libertarian blog, invited the him to a debate in the course of which the two might amicably discuss Connecticut’s hobbling economy.

One of the distinguishing marks of the Tea Party movement is a fervently held belief in what might be called a politics of limits. In insisting on constitutional probity, Tea Party folk are treading heavily on a very sore corn. One of the deepest buried assumptions of the progressive movement is that -- the sky’s the limit, constitutional prescriptions be damned.

There is nothing demonic about the Tea Party movement, though campaign demagoguery may yet succeed in putting horns on the heads of what Mr. MacGuffie has called Mr. Malloy’s neighbors. In Connecticut and throughout the left of center northeast, where progressives are feeling their oats, the once vital moderate center of Democrat Party politics has all but disappeared.  In Connecticut, where radical progressives presume to call Tea Party Patriots “extremists,” the sky is the limit, and the state Tea Party is not political force to be reckoned with – yet.

Connecticut’s Tea Party, however, can cause a world of hurt for members of the loyal opposition party who stray from constitutional orthodoxy. Just now, some members of Connecticut’s Tea Party are sorely disappointed with Republican leaders in the General Assembly who conspired with Democrats to write a gun restriction bill in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre that will not put a large enough dent in the criminal acquisition of weapons regularly used by gang members in urban areas to assault both peaceful and non-peaceful.

Mr. McKinney’s endorsement of Mr. Greenberg, who has managed to avoid arousing the enmity of Connecticut’s Tea Party, may take some of the sharp edge off a few highly charged opponents within the Tea Party. At some point, members of the Tea Party in Connecticut must decide whether opposition on a point of principle that may sink a vigorous Republican challenge to Mr. Malloy will advance or retard their long term goals, robustly stated by Mr. MacGuffie in his debate challenge to Mr. Malloy:

“Our movement is largely about reducing federal power by urging our representatives to pass only the laws permitted by the Constitution and to unwind those that are unconstitutional. We are part of the greater liberty movement of Tea Party members, conservatives, libertarians, and constitutionalists who propose a free-market alternative to every failing liberal boondoggle the Democratic Party has foisted on us.”

Actuarial Doubts

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” – Benjamin Disraeli

Actuarial figures supporting claimed budget savings in Plan A2 -- son of Plan A, a slightly revised budget that Governor Dannel Malloy months ago submitted to the General Assembly for approval -- have been called into doubt for some time.

The Malloy budget approved by the Democratic controlled General Assembly early in May, for instance, contained a savings line that could not be actuarially verified. The Malloy budget simply assumes a savings of $270 million arising from a commitment from state workers to devise ways of saving money.

When Republican leaders -- who have been successfully cut out of the budget negotiation process by Mr. Malloy and Democratic leaders in the General Assembly – questioned the assumptions that underpinned the projected savings, Malloy communications director Colleen Flanagan intemperately responded that the figures had been verified by their actuaries and they were accurate – “period!”

But there are few periods in politics, and one budget exile, House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero, has now bravely questioned what Mr. Disraeli most certainly would call a damned lie.

Period? Seems more like a question mark, Mr. Cafero mused after a letter written by Malloy budget chief Ben Barnes began to circulate through the political grapevine.

Mr. Cafero noted  that “Office of Policy and Management (OPM) Secretary Ben Barnes contradicted claims that savings included in the $1.6 billion state employee union concessions package had all been verified by actuaries” in a letter Mr. Barns sent to State Senator Andrew Roraback.”

In his letter to Mr. Roraback, Mr. Barnes sought to “correct what must be a misunderstanding about Ms. Flanagan's statement.”

The review conducted by Mr. Malloy’s actuaries, Mr. Barnes wrote, centered upon “the health benefit plan design changes, and the changes to plan design and eligibility for the State Employee Retirement System (SERS)… Other savings in the agreement reflect commitments between SEBAC and the State to identify operational, contractual, and efficiency‐related savings in the areas of technology, healthcare contracting (under the terms of the existing plan of benefits), and other operational savings. These particular commitments to achieve savings were not actuarially determined, because they are not savings of an actuarial nature [Italics mine]. Nevertheless, they reflect a commitment between the State and our employees, and more importantly between the Governor and the people of Connecticut, to reduce the cost of government this year and into the future.”

Noting that Mr. Barnes “rather clearly states only two areas of the plan were verified" by Malloy hired actuaries, Mr. Cafero offers a “period” of his own: “This means two things, and they are both important: First, the governor's office has been less than factual in their wholesale assurances of actuarial reviews. Second, the question still persists - how will we achieve these projected savings, and what will we do if they can't be realized?”

The Democratic controlled General Assembly last May approved over the protestations of Republicans a budget that was dependent upon an affirmation from SEBAC, the union coalition authorized to negotiate contracts with the Malloy administration, that never materialized. State union worker rejected Plan A. Leaders of SEBAC, yielding to strong suggestions made by the Malloy administration, then unilaterally changed union by-laws to insure that a future vote would not incommode Mr. Malloy, his administration or supportive Democratic leaders in the General Assembly – principally Senate President Don Williams and Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, who recently announced he is running for the U.S. House in the 5th District.

And now, on the eve of what some consider a fixed vote, rank and file union members are poised to affirm a budget that relies on savings that cannot be verified by the General Assembly’s own Office of Fiscal Analysis.

Responding to Mr. Cafero’s concerns, Malloy senior advisor Roy Occhiogrosso was every bit as terse as Ms. Flanagan. None of Mr. Malloy’s agents can rightly be accused script deficiencies; they are always on the same page.

“Let's be honest,” Mr. Occhiogrosso retorted, “What's bothering Rep. Cafero and his Republican colleagues is that if all this comes to pass it'll be a Democratic Governor who achieves this historic restructuring of the relationship between the state and its workforce, not a Republican. It's sour grapes on their part - nothing more, nothing less.”

Period.

Office Of Fiscal Analysis To Malloy: Your Budget Doesn’t Compute

The guys and gals who work at the Office of Fiscal Analysis (OFA) are the “go to” people for legislators who do not carry an Encyclopedia Britannica around in their heads. Throw some number on the floor before them and they can tell you if the numbers are accurate or fictional. Even on a bad day, they can tell you how many angels fit on the head of a pin. And in our statistical age, when every “non-partisan” agency is connected at the hip to fiercely partisan politicians, the OFA is genuinely non-partisan -- in the way that math or water is non-partisan.

Having examined the estimated savings in the Governor Dannel Malloy-SEBAC budget, the OFA has found that 60% of the savings claims made therein are UNVERIFIABLE.

The bad news was brought to the attention of the general public by Keith Phaneuf of CTMirror:

“Nonpartisan legislative analysts say they can vouch for less than 40 percent of the $1.6 billion in labor savings figured into the next biennial budget, and are unable to assess the rest--more than $1 billion--because of unanswered questions or insufficient data, according to a memo submitted late Monday to the General Assembly.”

Not to worry, say the epigones of transparency in the Malloy administration and their Democratic chorus in the General Assembly, the savings are real. The Malloy administration paid a good chunk of cash to an actuarial consulting firm outside of state government – perhaps the first and last time the Malloy administration will outsource state business – to produce the figures they needed to show a balanced budget.

Then the massive budget documentation was dumped on the doorstep of the ladies and gents at the OFA for verification. No dice, said the OFA: “Please note that at this time we are unable to determine or verify the levels that are contained in these estimates in many cases," OFA Director Alan Calandro wrote in a memo to Republican House leader Larry Cafero.

No actuarial analysis had been offered to OFA to support a contention that $67 million would be saved by increasing penalties for senior employees who retire earlier than the normal age; OFA could not determine from the figures provided to them how much would be saved by a new hybrid retirement plan for higher education employees; the Malloy administration had not provided to OFA their assumptions in support of a claim that health care provision would save the state $245.9 million in two years; the OFA lacked documentation to support a claim made by the Malloy administration that a new Health Enhancement Program would reduce health care claims by 4 percent in the first year and 10 percent in the second; OFA intimated that the new health care plan, which relies on preventative services, might increase costs, figures not provided in the administration’s savings estimates. The OFA Memo to Cafero goes on and on, piling up doubtful “savings.”.

The OFA’s aspersions are regarded by Office of Policy and Management Secretary Benjamin Barnes as a “delaying tactic” to prevent speedy approval of the Malloy-Williams-Donovan-SEBAC budget. Mr. Barnes has acknowledged that some savings targets amounting to $345 million were of necessity poorly defined. The OFA could not affirm such savings because “information as to how savings were estimated has not been provided."

The OFA’s inability to verify the cost savings in the Malloy budget has not disturbed the  equanimity of Senior Malloy advisor Roy Occhiogrosso, who said, despite the OFA’s misgivings, that the Malloy administration and the unions were “confident in the numbers.” But then Mr. Occhiogrosso’s confidence is unbounded – even when he is told by Mr. Malloy’s OPM Director that $345 million of the reputed savings boosting his confidence is questionable.

The budget itself rests upon $1.6 billion in union givebacks that will not be given back until the budget has been passed by the union dependent Democratic Party cohort in the General Assembly, whose confidence matches that of Mr. Occhiogrosso.

This year’s $40 billion two year budget has a novel twist to it: The budget is pre-approved, which means the General Assembly will pass a bill that rests on unassured, assumed savings: Union have not yet approved contracts that include expected givebacks of $1.6 billion.

Following seven hours of debate, Republican Senator Andrew Roraback, a 17 year veteran of the General Assembly, offered an amendment requiring the Democratic dominated legislature to return in special session to vote on the SEBAC agreement. Addressing Lieutenant governor Nancy Wyman, Mr. Roraback said:

“It doesn't feel right, Madam President. If this bill passes, we will all drive blindly into the night, asking ourselves, 'What was it that we just did?'… I can't ever remember a time in the history of this body when we have pre-approved a contract change. ... Yet, we're ratifying something that is in the ether. ... I have never before seen anything that remotely resembles the process of this bill. ... It is customary for the horse to come first and then the cart.''

Mr. Roraback’s amendment was defeated, and confident majority Democrats in the legislature promptly voted in favor of putting the cart before the horse.