Is Connecticut’s Democratic Party any longer the party of Andrew Jackson?

The modern Democratic Party, as every student of history knows, dropped out of the pockets of Andrew Jackson, a president vilified by the opposition of his day as being a tad too democratic.

Democrats in Connecticut regularly gather together to celebrate their historic roots at a dinner called the Jefferson-Jackson-Bailey Dinner, John Bailey being the last boss of the Democratic Party in Connecticut. At the fest, all the Democratic poobahs in the state gather together under one roof to eat, drink and make merry.

President Jackson’s farewell address, printed unedited below, has in it a few messages that modern Democrats, especially those in Connecticut, should take to heart.
The address was reprinted recently by the Washington Times under the title “Jackson: Old Hickoy’s Tea Party roots.”


President Andrew Jackson's Farewell Address,


March 4, 1837

“Being about to retire finally from public life, I beg leave to offer you my grateful thanks for the many proofs of kindness and confidence which I have received at your hands. ... And if I use the occasion to offer to you the counsels of age and experience, you will, I trust, receive them with the same indulgent kindness which you have so often extended to me, and will at least see in them an earnest desire to perpetuate in this favored land the blessings of liberty and equal law.

“We have now lived almost 50 years under the Constitution framed by the sages and patriots of the Revolution. The conflicts in which the nations of Europe were engaged during a great part of this period, the spirit in which they waged war against each other, and our intimate commercial connections with every part of the civilized world rendered it a time of much difficulty for the Government of the United States. We have had our seasons of peace and of war, with all the evils which precede or follow a state of hostility with powerful nations. We encountered these trials with our Constitution yet in its infancy, and under the disadvantages which a new and untried government must always feel when it is called upon to put forth its whole strength without the lights of experience to guide it or the weight of precedents to justify its measures. But we have passed triumphantly through all these difficulties. Our Constitution is no longer a doubtful experiment, and at the end of nearly half a century we find that it has preserved unimpaired the liberties of the people, secured the rights of property, and that our country has improved and is flourishing beyond any former example in the history of nations. ...

“It is well known that there have always been those amongst us who wish to enlarge the powers of the General Government, and experience would seem to indicate that there is a tendency on the part of this Government to overstep the boundaries marked out for it by the Constitution. Its legitimate authority is abundantly sufficient for all the purposes for which it was created, and its powers being expressly enumerated, there can be no justification for claiming anything beyond them. Every attempt to exercise power beyond these limits should be promptly and firmly opposed, for one evil example will lead to other measures still more mischievous; and if the principle of constructive powers or supposed advantages or temporary circumstances shall ever be permitted to justify the assumption of a power not given by the Constitution, the General Government will before long absorb all the powers of legislation, and you will have in effect but one consolidated government. From the extent of our country, its diversified interests, different pursuits, and different habits, it is too obvious for argument that a single consolidated government would be wholly inadequate to watch over and protect its interests; and every friend of our free institutions should be always prepared to maintain unimpaired and in full vigor the rights and sovereignty of the States and to confine the action of the General Government strictly to the sphere of its appropriate duties.

“There is, perhaps, no one of the powers conferred on the Federal Government so liable to abuse as the taxing power. The most productive and convenient sources of revenue were necessarily given to it, that it might be able to perform the important duties imposed upon it; and the taxes which it lays upon commerce being concealed from the real payer in the price of the article, they do not so readily attract the attention of the people as smaller sums demanded from them directly by the tax gatherer. But the tax imposed on goods enhances by so much the price of the commodity to the consumer, and as many of these duties are imposed on articles of necessity which are daily used by the great body of the people, the money raised by these imposts is drawn from their pockets. Congress has no right under the Constitution to take money from the people unless it is required to execute some one of the specific powers intrusted to the Government; and if they raise more than is necessary for such purposes, it is an abuse of the power of taxation, and unjust and oppressive. It may indeed happen that the revenue will sometimes exceed the amount anticipated when the taxes were laid. When, however, this is ascertained, it is easy to reduce them, and in such a case it is unquestionably the duty of the Government to reduce them, for no circumstances can justify it in assuming a power not given to it by the Constitution nor in taking away the money of the people when it is not needed for the legitimate wants of the Government.

“Plain as these principles appear to be, you will yet find there is a constant effort to induce the General Government to go beyond the limits of its taxing power and to impose unnecessary burdens upon the people. Many powerful interests are continually at work to procure heavy duties on commerce and to swell the revenue beyond the real necessities of the public service, and the country has already felt the injurious effects of their combined influence. They succeeded in obtaining a tariff of duties bearing most oppressively on the agricultural and laboring classes of society and producing a revenue that could not be usefully employed within the range of the powers conferred upon Congress, and in order to fasten upon the people this unjust and unequal system of taxation extravagant schemes of internal improvement were got up in various quarters to squander the money and to purchase support. Thus one unconstitutional measure was intended to be upheld by another, and the abuse of the power of taxation was to be maintained by usurping the power of expending the money in internal improvements. You can not have forgotten the severe and doubtful struggle through which we passed when the executive department of the Government by its veto endeavored to arrest this prodigal scheme of injustice and to bring back the legislation of Congress to the boundaries prescribed by the Constitution. The good sense and practical judgment of the people when the subject was brought before them sustained the course of the Executive, and this plan of unconstitutional expenditures for the purposes of corrupt influence is, I trust, finally overthrown.

"The result of this decision has been felt in the rapid extinguishment of the public debt and the large accumulation of a surplus in the Treasury, notwithstanding the tariff was reduced and is now very far below the amount originally contemplated by its advocates. But, rely upon it, the design to collect an extravagant revenue and to burden you with taxes beyond the economical wants of the Government is not yet abandoned. The various interests which have combined together to impose a heavy tariff and to produce an overflowing Treasury are too strong and have too much at stake to surrender the contest. The corporations and wealthy individuals who are engaged in large manufacturing establishments desire a high tariff to increase their gains. Designing politicians will support it to conciliate their favor and to obtain the means of profuse expenditure for the purpose of purchasing influence in other quarters; and since the people have decided that the Federal Government can not be permitted to employ its income in internal improvements, efforts will be made to seduce and mislead the citizens of the several States by holding out to them the deceitful prospect of benefits to be derived from a surplus revenue collected by the General Government and annually divided among the States; and if, encouraged by these fallacious hopes, the States should disregard the principles of economy which ought to characterize every republican government, and should indulge in lavish expenditures exceeding their resources, they will before long find themselves oppressed with debts which they are unable to pay, and the temptation will become irresistible to support a high tariff in order to obtain a surplus for distribution. Do not allow yourselves, my fellow-citizens, to be misled on this subject. The Federal Government can not collect a surplus for such purposes without violating the principles of the Constitution and assuming powers which have not been granted. It is, moreover, a system of injustice, and if persisted in will inevitably lead to corruption, and must end in ruin. The surplus revenue will be drawn from the pockets of the people - from the farmer, the mechanic, and the laboring classes of society; but who will receive it when distributed among the States, where it is to be disposed of by leading State politicians, who have friends to favor and political partisans to gratify? It will certainly not be returned to those who paid it and who have most need of it and are honestly entitled to it. There is but one safe rule, and that is to confine the General Government rigidly within the sphere of its appropriate duties. It has no power to raise a revenue or impose taxes except for the purposes enumerated in the Constitution, and if its income is found to exceed these wants it should be forthwith reduced and the burden of the people so far lightened. ...

"In presenting to you, my fellow-citizens, these parting counsels, I have brought before you the leading principles upon which I endeavored to administer the Government in the high office with which you twice honored me. Knowing that the path of freedom is continually beset by enemies who often assume the disguise of friends, I have devoted the last hours of my public life to warn you of the dangers. The progress of the United States under our free and happy institutions has surpassed the most sanguine hopes of the founders of the Republic. Our growth has been rapid beyond all former example in numbers, in wealth, in knowledge, and all the useful arts which contribute to the comforts and convenience of man, and from the earliest ages of history to the present day there never have been thirteen millions of people associated in one political body who enjoyed so much freedom and happiness as the people of these United States. You have no longer any cause to fear danger from abroad; your strength and power are well known throughout the civilized world, as well as the high and gallant bearing of your sons. It is from within, among yourselves - from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power - that factions will be formed and liberty endangered. It is against such designs, whatever disguise the actors may assume, that you have especially to guard yourselves. You have the highest of human trusts committed to your care. Providence has showered on this favored land blessings without number, and has chosen you as the guardians of freedom, to preserve it for the benefit of the human race. May He who holds in His hands the destinies of nations make you worthy of the favors He has bestowed and enable you, with pure hearts and pure hands and sleepless vigilance, to guard and defend to the end of time the great charge He has committed to your keeping."

The Separation Of Church And Connecticut

The separation of church and state – an expression first found in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to Baptists in Danbury and not in the U.S. Constitution – is one of those secular pieties rigidly observed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others, except when it is not religiously observed.

The Rev. LeRoy Bailey, who had opened First Cathedral church in Bloomfield to students graduating from High Schools within reasonable distance of the cathedral, was set upon by the ever vigilant – except when it is not being vigilant – ACLU, which persuaded a court that the reverend had overstepped putative constitutional strictures. The court shut down the operation, apparently because it felt that students gathering in a church building to celebrate a secular event in the absence of masses and ministers would somehow infect the assembled students with impermissible religious doctrines. One political observer, myself, speculated that the court perhaps believed in homeopathic magic.

And now the unthinkable has happened: Two churches in New Haven have opened their doors to politicians, while the ACLU is sleeping the sleep of the just.

True, the politicians – Linda McMahon and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, both running for U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd’s soon to be vacant seat in congress -- are not recent graduates of Connecticut schools, but each, according to stories in the New Haven Independent, did attend a church to spread their political gospels. From the point of view of the ACLU, which considered the church and state association in Bloomfield to be impermissible, it should hardly matter at all in these circumstances who is corrupting whom. There were, after all, children in the assembly.

Blumenthal, whose political gathering was held in the basement of a church, should not be able for that reason to shrug off the demanding fiats of the ACLU; the homeopathic magic that polluted graduating students at First Church seeps through stone and floorboard, and on these two more recent occasions ministers of the word were present.

Blumenthal’s evangel for his affair was U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Catholic who has from time to time quarreled publicly with certain unsavory demands of her church. The Catholic Church, its bishops, the Pope and a sizeable chunk of the laity, all frown on abortion and positively snarl at partial birth abortion. Ms. DeLauro’s conscience is at ease with both, as are the unruffled consciences of other putative Catholics in Connecticut’s congressional delegation, prominent among them Mr. Dodd and U.S. Rep. John Larson. Homeopathic magic, it should be observed, has not infected the state’s Catholic members of the Congressional delegation who, presumably, attend services on Sundays, otherwise they would be simpatico with their church’s doctrines.

Church-state affairs in Thomas Hooker’s Connecticut suffered a setback when Politico disclosed recently that Mr. Blumenthal’s campaign aides had discussed “tarring Linda McMahon in cooperation with Planned Parenthood,” the pro-choice abortion providers.

In an e-mail supplied to Politico, "Worst of WWE + women photos," one of the aides breaks out in song: “"Hey all — Grossman is looking for mysoginistic (sic) photos of women and WWE. Planned Parenthood wants to hit LM hard on it,"

Heeding the call, press staffer Marcy Stech e-mailed seven other campaign aides and the State Democratic Party. "What do we got? (sic)"

Andrew Grossman, a top tier Democratic operative with Babylon on the Potomac experience, worked at the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee from 1999 to 2003. In 2004, he was the director of Polling and Targeting for the George Soros-funded group, America Coming Together. In 2005, he founded Wal-Mart Watch. The e-mail, Politico remarks, “seems to raise the question of whether the campaign is coordinating with Planned Parenthood, an outside group.”

It was left to Blumenthal spokesman Ty Matsdorf to offer a non-apology for the attempt to smear McMahon. Apparently, Dick – as we are encouraged to call the attorney general formerly known as Richard – was unavailable for comment, as was Mr. Grossman. Mr. Matsdorf claimed, somewhat implausibly in such a well coordinated campaign, that the Blumenthal effort to tar Mrs. McMahon was uncoordinated. The campaign was simply looking for “an image that would be circulated on Twitter or in a press release, but not in a paid ad campaign of any sort.”

Next Sunday, two days before Election Day, as we head for church to beg forgiveness of our sins, Democrats might to well to send up a prayer that God may bless and coordinate the Blumenthal campaign.

Larson-Brickley-Krayeske-Hutchinson Debate

Two weeks before Connecticut voters are due to troop to the polls, U.S. Rep John Larson debated his opponents – Republican Ann Brickley, Green Party candidate Ken Krayeske and Socialist Action candidate Chris Hutchinson – at the West Hartford Town Hall. According to one report, Mr. Larson appeared “annoying.” The journalist who turned in the report surely meant to say that Mr. Larson looked “annoyed,” though it is unclear from the report which of the three burrs under his saddle irritated him most.

Those who could not attend the debate may find it on Ameriborn News. Following the debate in West Hartford, three more are scheduled.

Lately, and most surprisingly, Mrs. Brickley has crept up on Mr. Larson in the polls, a mere seven points separating the two.

Mr. Krayeske is best known for having been arrested by over-exuberant Harford police some years ago while innocently interrupting a parade and taking some pictures of Gov. Jodi Rell. He also confronted UConn coach Jim Calhoun with questions concerning his salary, and this produced some verbal fireworks during which the coach advised Mr. Krayeske to “Shut up.” Far from shutting up, Krayeske, a lawyer recently admitted to Connecticut’s bar, threw his hat into the ring in the First District.

Brickley’s resume is much fuller than those of Mr. Krayeske or Mr. Hutchinson. Mrs. Brickley is a licensed engineer, former employee of United Technologies and General Electric who now owns her own business consulting firm. Larson, one of the goodest of good old boys in the U.S. Congress, is the present executor of a seat that has been held by Democrats for the last five decades. Before Larson, the seat was owned by Barbara Kennelly, daughter of the last real Democratic Party boss in Connecticut. Mrs. Kennelly held the seat for 17 years. After the passing of her father, John Bailey, certain traditional party functions were outsourced: Anti-Republican and anti-Democratic crusher ads are now being shown and financed by extra-party functionaries; incumbent politicians are expected to raise their own campaign funds; and campaign strategies tend to be written by beltway Hessians.

This year, some incumbents – partly owing to the rise of the much reviled Tea Party movement – are having a rough go of it, and Mr. Larson’s sense of unease is shared by many. Among active voters, both Democrats and unaffiliateds each outnumber Republicans by a more than two to one margin. Mr. Larson’s slippage in the polls is directly related to dissatisfaction with Beltway solutions to the lingering recession, high taxes, out of control spending, bottomless deficits, malingering foreign wars and President Barack Obama’s drooping ratings among Independents and some Democrats.

On a sliding scale from socialist to capitalist, Mr. Hutchinson, who favors a 100% tax on rich people, would rank first, followed by Mr. Krayeske, Mr. Larson and Mrs. Brickley.

Mr. Hutchinson did not reveal in the debate in which town he plans to locate his gulag to house dispossessed kulaks, but West Hartford, a relatively wealthy town, dotted here and there with houses that reek of ill gotten riches and fortunes to be confiscated under the Hutchinson dispensation, would seem to be an obvious choice. In the matter of taxing entrepreneurial profits, Mr. Krayeske favors turning back the clock to the Reagan era in which taxes on the redundantly rich were at 50% of income. The problem with wealth confiscations is this: Under Mr. Hutchinson’s 100% plan, wealth can only be confiscated once. Wealth having been confiscated and dispersed, possibly to teachers, what is the Mr. Hutchinson’s Second Year Plan? When all the cows have been butchered and eaten, when there is no more milk in the udders -- when there are no more udders -- whence comes the milk? If I rob everything Peter has and give it to Paul in year one, how do I satisfy Paul’s expectations in year two? How do you share the wealth when there is no wealth to share?

The enduring problem in politics is how to milk the cow gently and in such a way that the cow, after the taxing process, will thank you for the stroking. Mr. Larson would tax robustly – probably not the best idea in a recession -- while Mrs. Brickley would tax more prudently. Even Huey Long, from whose progressive program Franklin Roosevelt borrowed heavily, reduced taxes during the depression.

And the cows? If the stroking is brutal, they will move elsewhere, where the shadow of the gulag does not disturb their peaceful grazing.

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