The Ins and Outs of Politics

The ins, of course, are incumbents; the outs are everyone else.

How difficult is it for the outs to get in? The short answer is – nearly impossible.

Campaign finance reform was supposed to make it easier for the outs to break into the magic political circle. This has not happened, partly because of the influence of Super PACs.

A PAC is a Political Action Committee; a Super PAC is a very large and wealthy PAC operating outside the precincts of political parties.

McCain-Feingold – and its equivalent in the U.S. House, Shays-Meehan – more or less illegalized large “soft money” contributions to political parties. The U.S. Supreme Court, reviewing the campaign finance bill, determined that a legislative directive outlawing “soft money” contributions to PACs not directly connected to political parties was an unconstitutional prohibition that violated the First Amendment. The court’s ruling opened a Pandora’s Box that now allows outliers, persons and groups not formally attached to parties, to raise and spend unlimited sums of money to advocate for or against political candidates.
In an interview with Ameriborn News, former U.S. Representative Chris Shays was asked by interviewer John Doyle to dilate on the relationship between Shays-Meehan and Super PACS:

“Doyle: I’m realty short on my time, but I can’t resist just asking you this, and I tried to cage you into it before: After Citizens United, there are a great many people in the United States who say to both parties, I think, that are just rolling in money, and the corrosive effect it’s having on our campaigns, whether it’s the presidential campaign.. now it’s the Obama fund raising machine with its Super PACs and, of course, the wealthy people supporting various Republican candidates… ah, Shays-Meehan, one of the early…

“Shays: That’s campaign finance reform. Let me give you the quick version. The quick version is: In 1906 the Tillman Act said corporations could not contribute to campaigns. The Taft Hartley Act in [19]47 said unions can’t contribute to campaigns, and you got FEC, the federal Elections Commission, to bypass the laws by creating the concept of soft educational money, which was just a front to bring both the corporations and the unions back in. So, John McCain in the Senate and I in the House looked to enforce the [19]06 laws: no corporate money, no union dues money. We had already limited what individuals could contribute to campaigns. And John McCain said if it’s constitutional, we’ll call it McCain-Feingold and, if it’s unconstitutional, it’s called Shays-Meehan. And then, they [the Supreme Court] revisited one part and said you couldn’t limit what corporations could contribute to campaigns. And they’re just [describing] the marketplace in a way that I think is really destructive. But you know what? I’ve fought that battle. I’ve come to the conclusion if the Federal Elections Commission isn’t going to be with you, however you write the law, they’re going to twist it, and it will be a wasted effort. And I kind of feel like -- You know what? – our country is going bankrupt; we have no energy independence; our infrastructure is falling apart; we haven’t reformed the tax code; we haven’t gotten rid of the red tape. Those are where I’m putting my focus.”

The evolution of the Tillman Act is instructive. Following the 1904 presidential election, charges were made that Republican President Teddy Roosevelt had accepted campaign contributions from corporations, a great personal embarrassment. Once in office, Mr. Roosevelt proposed that all contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law. Mr. Roosevelt, one of the more accomplished demagogues of the Gilded Age -- just ask Mark Twain – during his independent run for the presidency on the Progressive Party ticket in 1912, would make it a point to denounce the malefactors of great wealth who once generously had invested in his winning 1904 campaign.

South Carolina Senator Benjamin Tillman obliged Mr. Roosevelt by sponsoring a bill that became known as the Tillman Act. The bill passed the Senate in June of 1906, causing the New York Times to burst into song. One “great financial authority who is a Republican,” the Times reported,“gave assurance that 'he and all the financial men with whom I have talked have welcomed this legislation with very much the same emotions with which a serf would hail his liberation from a tyrannous autocrat.’”

The Tillman Act, said the Times, “will not bring about the millennium, but will lessen a very mean and sordid practice of blackmail... the great number of corporations that have suffered extortion through weakness and cowardice will have their backbones stiffened, and parties will be put to it to fill their coffers by really voluntary contributions."

The end result of McCain-Feingold-Shays-Meehan is not a happy one. The bill ultimately removed from political parties large and politically decisive contributions and placed them in the hands of extra-party financers who are able, by investing in individual politicians, to determine political winners and losers. And Super PAC operators are no less autocratic or tyrannous than the malefactors of great wealth once denounced by the first progressive; they are simply less visible and more irresponsible.

On Gas and Gasbags

According to some reports, gas prices are due to increase as much as 60 cents on the gallon by summer.

Citing rising gas prices, up 83 percent under his tenure, President Barack Obama has called for an extension of the payroll tax cut as a means of providing some relief to a Middle Class hard hit by the malingering Obama recession.

“Allowing this tax cut to expire,” Mr. Obama said, “would make people’s lives harder right now. It would make their choices more difficult. It would be $40 less for groceries to feed your kids; it would be $40 less for the medications you depend on; $40 less to cover bills and the rent; $40 less to take care of an elder parent, or to donate to a church or a charity.”

CNSNews points out, “When Obama entered the White House in January 2009, the city average price for one gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $1.79, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The figures are in nominal dollars: not adjusted for inflation. Five months later in June, unleaded gasoline was $2.26 per gallon, an increase of 26 percent. By December 2011, the price of regular unleaded gas per gallon was $3.28, an 83 percent increase from January 2009.”

Prices on commodities generally rise for two reasons. Either a shortage of the product or an increase in demand will make gas more expensive; therefore, it follows that an increase in the supply of the product will lower the price of gas. Mr. Obama’s government does not wish to pursue an energy policy that will reduce the price of gas by increasing the supply of the product – easily done by tapping into plentiful supplies both in the United States and Canada -- because the administration wishes to encourage the production of cars that do not use gas. Also, the federal government winks at high gas prices because federal and state revenues rise in direct proportion to increases in the price of gas.

Here in Connecticut, which has the second highest gas tax in the nation, Republican State Senator Len Suzio has crafted a bill that will cap the notorious 7.35 percent Gross Receipts Tax at three dollars a gallon. Without the cap, the hidden gross receipts tax rises in tandem with the rise in the price of gas. The state of Connecticut reaps about 50 cents per gallon of gas from Connecticut’s excise and gross receipt taxes. About 23 cents per gallon is sucked out of taxpayer’s wallets and purses by the aptly named GROSS Receipts Tax. Mr. Suzio’s proposed cap will, of course, mean less tax revenue for the state’s incontinent Big Spenders in the General Assembly, the majority of them Democrats who have not taken a shine to Mr. Suzio’s version of Mr. Obama’s Middle Class tax relief bill.

Democratic Senator Paul Doyle of Wethersfield, for instance, cautioned that “people should not be fooled into thinking the plan will translate to relief at the gas pump… Not only does this proposal fail to rein in out-of-control gas prices, but it would dramatically reduce revenue needed to repair bridges and roads throughout the state, projects that would in turn create jobs. While I appreciate the zeal for tax cuts in general, I find unacceptable any tax cut that does not get passed to consumers at the pump and that could jeopardize the safety of drivers on state roads and bridges… As co-chairman of the committee that fights to protect consumers, I do not believe the proposal would ease the burden of exorbitant gas prices,” said Senator Doyle, who chairs the General Law Committee.

According to news reports, Mr. Doyle promised – tardily, as it happens – “to work with the Department of Consumer Protection and other consumer advocates to explore ways to ensure gasoline wholesalers adhere to Connecticut law and do not pass the cost of the gross receipt tax onto consumers.”

The issue was decided 30 years ago in Mobil Oil Corp versus Dubno. The state of Connecticut sought to prevent oil companies from passing along to consumers the gross receipts tax it imposed on oil. The Supreme Court, rendering a declaratory judgment, found unconstitutional the prohibitive portion of the Connecticut statute -- section 13(b) of Connecticut Public Act 80-71 – because “…it is pre-empted by federal law and thus violates the Supremacy Clause [of the U.S. Constitution].”

Mr. Suzio points out that Mr. Doyle, the co-chairman of the Law Committee, likely does not have “power to overturn Supreme Court decisions.”

Mr. Suzio’s tax cut, no less than the tax cut for which Mr. Obama is agitating, will make it easier for the Middle Class to survive the crushing tax increases imposed upon them by Mr. Malloy, the architect of the largest tax increase in Connecticut’s history, even at the risk of disappointing tax prone Democrats such as Mr. Doyle.

Doyle And The Assassins

Hartford Courant investigative reporter Jon Lender has noted that that Paul Doyle (D-Wethersfield) engaged in some “sticky” business in 2008 that has now come back to prick him:

“Here's how it all started: In late October 2008, The Courant published a relatively short story that said Doyle, a lawyer who is paid tens of thousands of dollars a year as an outside counsel to the state's trash agency, got the agency to delay paying him his full fee in 2007 so he could bypass a law designed to restrict state contractors from contributing to political campaigns.

“Doyle billed the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority for legal work in September 2007, and the agency issued him a check the following month for $4,016. But he returned the check Nov. 1 — and then, in January of 2008, the CRRA issued him a new check for the same amount.”

Doyle said he had engaged in the creative accounting because had his fees from CRRA exceeded $50,000, the law would have considered him a “state contractor,” and as such neither he nor his law partners could have made contributions to candidates they supported.

A clever legal pate can always find a route around an inconvenient and burdensome law or regulations.

Much ado was made about Doyle’s artful dodge by his Republican campaign opponent Ralph Capanera and Republican Party Chairman Chris Healy, recently styled by Doyle as his opponent’s “political assassin.”

Doyle won the election, but alas not every matter may be settled at the ballot box. Healy requested in February that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal investigate Doyle for tax evasion.

“Doyle did this,” Healy wrote to Blumenthal, “to postpone reportable income for 2007 and to avoid meeting the definition of 'state contractor' which would implicate and jeopardize his elected position as state senator." Healy regarded the acceptance by CCRC of Doyle’s creative accounting a "special treatment from a state agency" that gets fees from municipalities' tax revenues, and he reminded Blumenthal of his pledge to “vigorously pursue” tax evaders to the very gates of Hell.

A month went by and Healy received a missive from Blumenthal advising that he had passed the buck to the Department of Revenue Services "for its review and action as appropriate." The attorney general also noted that since Healy was alleging “possible criminal law violations, you should be aware that the DRS Division of Collections and Enforcement has … the power to make arrests where warranted, and to refer cases to appropriate criminal authorities for prosecution when necessary."

Piqued at Healy’s persistence, Doyle alleged political assassination; Lender admonished Doyle about “sticky” situations; and the raucous crowd that bays from the rooftops whenever a Republican wanders into “sticky” situations quickly fell into its usual stupor.