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.

The Castagna, Soucy Show

“I seen My Opportunities and I Took ’Em” -- George Washington Plunkitt, Tammany Hall boss” 

Patrick Castagna, an FBI informant, was wearing an FBI wire, but the chatty if cynical Ray Soucy, a former union leader and political wheeler dealer, was unaware of this, and so he went on and on and on, sounding for all the world like turn of the century Tammany Hall boss George Washington Plunkitt holding court at his bootblack stand.

Some bon motes from the spurting fountain:

"Chris Murphy will do anything in the (expletive deleted) world for me because he remembers that I was the first one to believe in and invest in him. That's how the system works."

After Mr. Soucy tells Mr. Castagna that he has been sowing the political ground in $10,000 increments, Mr. Castagna, reeling in the fish, doubts that the amount is sufficient.

Says Soucy, “The $10,000 was to let him know you are serious....We're dealing with politicians. We're not dealing with the mob." Pause – “It's a close second."

"Politics is about the Benjamins. [Ben Franklin’s mug is on the highly inflated hundred dollar bill] This game runs on one thing -- dollars."

“Pictures "they're worth a thousand words. The guy running in the 5th District [former House Speaker Chris Donovan] he got 10 pictures [a $10,000 campaign contribution].

And Mr. Soucy does put his feet where his mouth is. He claimed to have dropped 10 “pictures’ into the legislative office refrigerator of Republican House Minority Leader Larry Cafero. Mr. Soucy’s contribution was immediately returned by staffer John Healey. The ever persistent Mr. Soucy said at trial he had later converted the Benjamins into checks deposited into a political action fund controlled by Mr. Cafero.  

Mr. Cafero has issued a rebuttal: “I don't know what Mr. Soucy's status is as a convicted felon, but here's what I know. I know that I've learned that this was part of a sting operation and what I gather to be a poorly executed attempt at a bribe. What I do know is there was no bribe. What's most important to me is that a member of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, when interviewing me, said `you have done nothing wrong, you have done everything right. You have nothing to worry about. Neither you nor your staff have done nothing wrong.' No one took money as a bribe. There was no talk of a bribe."

Mr. Murphy has issued a statement through a spokesman: “Mr. Soucy was an active member of the labor movement and longtime supporter of Democratic campaigns, including Chris'. But the crimes he committed are inexcusable and unacceptable and he should be held fully accountable."

During his testimony, Mr. Soucy acknowledged that some of his statements were hyperbole. The defense attorney for Robert Braddock, Mr. Donovan’s former campaign finance director, is anxious to explore Mr. Soucy’s hyperbole on cross examination.

After newspaper accounts that members of Mr. Donovan’s staff had been indicted for accepting bribes, many of those charged pleaded out and were “cooperative” in the investigation. Mr. Braddock is the only one of eight defendants who held out for a trial on charges of conspiracy to violate federal campaign laws. The colorful Mr. Soucy – who has been called by the defense a “slime ball” – is the prosecution’s star witness. And, of course, so are the tapes.

Mr. Donovan, who lost a primary to Elizabeth Esty largely as a result of mounting publicity surrounding the FBI investigation, has not been charged with wrongdoing in the case. Following Mr. Donovan’s withdrawal, Elizabeth Esty, the wife of Daniel Esty, Governor Dannel Malloy’s Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), won the seat in a general election.

 

Prosecutions in sting operations always have about them a theatrical air, chiefly because all the characters arguing for the prosecution have been enlisted by prosecutors as ham actors used to ensnare Plunkitt types anxious to seize their opportunities.  The reputations of bystanders – perhaps Mr. Donovan and Mr. Cafero, who apparently were given notice of the operation by prosecutors – are considered collateral damage. On the judicial side of our tripartite government, even more so than in an election, winning is everything. Truth, a stranger to all, often sits in the back row of theatrical shows such as this one, mute and alone.      

Does “No” Mean Yes?

Governor Malloy has told the Appropriations and Finance, Revenue & Bonding committees through his Office of Policy and Management Secretary Ben Barnes that he will not resort to tax increases to backfill what Mr. Malloy calls a $365 million “shortfall” in his budget.

Mr. Malloy has been less assertive concerning “a deficit of as much as $1.2 billion projected for the coming fiscal year -- a shortfall of 6 percent-- saying only that he has ‘no intention of raising taxes,’" according to a story in CTMirror.

During his first budget, Mr. Malloy settled a budget deficit through massive broad based tax increases and anticipated “spending cuts” that fell short of the “shared sacrifice” from state workers that had been a hallmark of his gubernatorial campaign, which hoisted into the gubernatorial office the first Democratic governor since William O’Neill turned over the reins of government to Lowell Weicker, who settled his inherited deficit through the imposition of a state income tax, the second largest tax increase in state history. The Malloy tax increase is larger.

And here we are again – in deficit low dive.

The notion that Connecticut does not have a spending problem but rather a revenue problem that may always be solved through the expedient of tax increases seems now somehow quaint. That notion was, during the past four decades, much on the lips of politicians who did not wish unnecessarily to disturb their tax consuming constituencies, as well as lazy and thoughtless political commentators across the state who thought the good times of budget surpluses would never end, at least not here in Connecticut, in pre-income tax days thought to be one of the richest and most fiscally sound states in the union.

No more.

On a best (1) to worst (54) scale issued by Moody’s Analytics, Connecticut is near bottom (45) in economic growth. Connecticut’s economy has been flat ever since Mr. Weicker sought to solve the state’s revenue problem through a new income tax. The consequent revenue increases during the following decades opened a Pandora’s Box of spending.

It has now become settled opinion that Connecticut has a spending problem aggravated by an unwillingness on the part of successive governors and the Democratic dominated General Assembly to recognize the primary reason for the state’s woes –profligate spending -- even after all the red flags have gone up: Connecticut is number one in taxes and number one in pension obligations; the state has lost population from outmigration part of which has been caused by workers seeking employment opportunities in more business friendly states; young people armed with very expensive college educations paid by state taxpayers are taking their diplomas to greener economic pastures. And all this is simply the tip of a spending spree that has frozen the state’s forward movement.

It is against this depressing backdrop that Mr. Malloy has declared he “has no intention” of addressing the state’s current $365 million “shortfall” by increasing taxes, and it would be a refreshing sign of a return to fiscal sanity to suppose that one governor out of the last three has finally got the message.

State law permits the governor to address a shortfall in the budget by exercising his constitutionally limited rescission authority. Mr. Malloy already has announced that he will use his authority to cut between $150 and $160 million from the $365 million “shortfall,” leaving the remaining approximate $215 million balance to be addressed by the Democratic controlled General Assembly. The governor cannot rescission his way out of the deficit. Assuming Mr. Malloy is able to reduce the deficit as he wishes, the projected deficit the General Assembly must address for the coming fiscal year is approximately $1.2 billion plus $215 million – and growing.

The role that will be played by the General Assembly in liquidating the growing deficit introduces an uncertainty principle into Mr. Malloy’s repeated avowal that HE has no intention of increasing taxes. The Democratic dominated General Assembly may be of a different mind. Outgoing Speaker of the House Chris Donovan has in the past supported legislation that would increase state revenues by squeezing Gold Coast financial managers, and his successor, Brendan Sharkey, has not sworn off increasing tax rates progressively on the state’s entrepreneurial growth engines.

One supposes neither Mr. Malloy nor Mr. Barnes would be anxious to answer the question: Will the governor, who has pledged not to increase taxes, veto tax increase measures passed by his fellow Democrats in the legislature.

Time will tell. And time for the state’s recovery is running out.

The Dovovan-Williams Jihad

Speaker of the state House Chris Donovan and President Pro Tem of the state Senate Don Williams have been closeted together discussing two bills: a jobs bill pushed by Governor Dannel Malloy that appears to have bipartisan support in the General Assembly and Mr. Donovan’s signature minimum wage bill.

Mr. Donovan, running for the U.S. Congress in Connecticut’s 5^th District, dearly wants to push his bill raising the minimum wage 50 cents over two years through the General Assembly, and to this end he announced last week that he intended to attach his bill to a budget implementer.

After meeting with Mr. Williams for a little more than an hour, Mr. Donovan appeared to be uncertain which donkey’s rear he would attach his tail to, according to a story in CTNewsJunkie.

Mr. Williams, who can count up to 36 without stumbling, is convinced he lacks the votes in the Senate to pass Mr. Donovan’s minimum wage hike, a point he pressed upon Mr. Donovan sometime before the soon to be retired Speaker conditioned passage of the jobs bill in the House upon the passage in the Senate of his signature legislation. Mr. Donovan declined to present Mr. William’s bill in the House, and both bills expired in the last session.

Mr. Malloy – unlike former Republican governor Jodi Rell, a vigorous political campaigner –could easily  throw his support to former state Representative Elizabeth Esty, the wife of Daniel Esty, the governor’s Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).

At the Democratic nominating convention, Mr. Donovan rolled over Mrs. Esty, winning the 5^thDistrict nomination by 64 percent of the vote, marshaling 216 votes to Mrs. Esty’s 66. Both Mrs. Esty and Dan Roberti, who garnered 54 votes, qualified to campaign against Mr. Donovan in a primary. The delegate count likely encouraged Mr. Donovan to continue his efforts in persuading Mr. Williams to bring up the minimum wage bill in the Senate.

The introduction into the Senate of Mr. Donovan’s bill, assuming the numbers argue against it, is a politically charged affair. There are compelling reasons to vote against the bill: Minimum wage hikes artificially increase the price of labor, and the price of labor figures in the calculations of small businesses that tend to hire minimum wage workers. Beyond a certain point, businesses operating on a slender profit margin and forced to pay what may be for them an insupportable wage will accommodate the state ordered hike in wages by cutting back on hiring those affected, mostly young people entering the job market for the first time. Businesses that cannot make the cost saving accommodations will go out of business. In the long run, these compelled choices will not invigorate business activity and job production. Should Mr. Donovan’s minimum wage bill pass, Connecticut’s minimum wage will be the highest in the nation. In the long run, Mr. Donovan’s signature minimum wage bill sends to businesses considering moving into the state and instate businesses considering expanding a message that frustrates current efforts to prime the job pump.

In the short run, minimum wage hikes are campaign boosters, a staple political product of the fevered progressive on the make. In the long run, we are all dead. The long run is for chumps; it’s the short run that gets you elected and re-elected, particularly in a one party state in which left of center Democrats depend upon unions to prime the voting pump. Caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, Democrats in the General Assembly would rather not commit themselves publically to a vote on the minimum wage bill.

At the moment, Mr. Donovan is focused on attaching his bill to some viable legislative vehicle. Using a budget implementer to ferry his minimum wage hike through the General Assembly, some Democratic legislators think, might jeopardize the more politically attractive bi-partisan jobs bill. Asked by the reporter for CTNewsJunkie whether he thought such a prospect was likely, Mr. Donovan replied, “We’re hoping to make everybody happy. That’s what we’re trying to do.”

Mr. Donovan has already loosed his moorings to the tattered remains of what some benighted traditionalists still insist on calling the Democratic Party’s moderate “vital center.” There is no center, merely epicenters colliding with each other. Mr. Donovan purports to represent the future of state Democratic Party politics, solidly union connected, firmly centered in the state’s cities, unapologetically progressive and rather impatient with the stuffy old guard of the Democratic Party.

The new dawning day needs a new vanguard. Mr. Donovan is prepared to lead. Followers will find the welcome mat put out before the door to utopia.

The Komisarjevsky Trial And The Significance Of Pins

There was a point during the Cheshire murder trial when one of the defense attorneys representing accused murderer Joshua Komisarjevsky became concerned that small pins worn by family members of the murder victims might unduly prejudice the jury against their client.

The judge in the case, Jon Blue, ruled that the pins were not so indiscrete as to trip the prejudices of jurors.

The pin challenge by the defense followed by some months the publication of an interview Mr. Komisarjevsky gave to a reporter while incarcerated that was, the First Amendment still being the law of the land, widely covered by several state newspapers. The Komisarjevsky prison interview was fashioned into a hastily written book that found its way into libraries across the state. An effort was made, unsuccessfully, to pry the book from the hands of aggressive librarians conversant with the First Amendment.

Mr. Komisarjevsky, a very talkative fellow, also made a statement to police shortly after he was apprehended that was, most lawyers would agree, high incriminating, though Mr. Komisarjevsky was prudent enough to suggest in his statement that his companion in crime, Steven Hayes, earlier convicted of capital murder, had spread gasoline throughout the house and lit the fire intended to destroy evidence of their crime. This “evidence” included three victims, the wife of Dr. Petit and his two daughters, 11 years old Michaela and 17 year old Hayley.

So then, were the pins more or less prejudicial than Mr. Komisarjevsky several statements?

Most non-defense lawyers might agree that Mr. Komisarjevsky’s frequent admissions of participation in the Cheshire murders would more powerfully sway a jury in the direction of a guilty verdict than the discrete pins worn by family members that so alarmed defense attorney Jeremiah Donovan.

Catching sight of the pins, Mr. Donovan referred to those wearing them as the “Petit posse” and sought to prevent the members of the hanging mob from displaying the prejudicial pins in sight of prospective jurors. The pins, worn in memory of Mr. Petit’s wife and daughters, were intended to support, according to one report, “the education of young people, especially women in the sciences, and those affected by chronic illness and violence.”

Possibly it was at this point, in the early jousting among prosecutors and defense attorneys that usually occurs before any trial’s main event, that some trial watchers may have concluded Mr. Donovan was, in his assault on discreet pins, tilling the ground for future appeals. In death penalty conviction cases, appeals are necessary to run out the clock. And the more appeals the better, because protracted capital offense cases run up a tab. And the more tabs the better, because one of the generic arguments urged by death penalty opponents is that capital punishment is prohibitively expensive.


Since the death penalty itself is both an offense against God and nature, one should use every means at one’s disposal to overthrow it. Extremism in defense of virtue, the virulently conservative Barry Goldwater once said, is no vice. And if one must use a justly convicted murderer as a mere prop to overthrow a moral evil such as capital punishment, well then …

This argument is akin to that used by brother-in-law Roper in the Robert Bolt play, “A man for all seasons. Mr. Roper was asked by Thomas More how far he would go to cage the devil, to which he responded that he would cut down ever law in England to do it, receiving from the soon to be martyred More the following rebuke:

“And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you-where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? (He leaves him) This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast -- man's laws, not God's -- and if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? (Quietly) Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.”

Roper responds that the law itself has become More’s “golden calf,” a mere fetish that must be overthrown in the defense of a greater moral good.

The real question involved in all death penalty cases – What winds would blow if the law were to be cut down? – is not one that should be decided by clever Ropers committed to subverting death penalty laws. Jurists should aim at justice, which is the giving to all what is due them under the law. If the law must be changed, it should not be changed by legal chicanery – but by sober, morally driven legislators, like More.