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.”

Soucy, Plunkitt And The Dovonan Sting Operation

The FBI’s singing canary in the Donovan probe, “labor activist” Ray Soucy, was not given prison time for the part he had played in the attempted corruption of former Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan.

The lede on a story in a Hartford paper ran as follows:

“A labor activist at the center of an attempt two years ago to kill a tax on tobacco by bribing a top state lawmaker with tens of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign money was sentenced Monday to three years probation, the first six months to be served at a halfway house.”

Connecticut’s majority Democratic Party is full of “labor activists.” It’s only a slight stretch to say Governor Dannel Malloy, who has marched on the picket line with union workers, is himself a “labor activist.” Mr. Malloy pledged his troth to unions when he was in the political nursery, and he has renewed his vows several times during his administration, most notably when his first budget was on the drawing boards.

However, few labor activists are as colorful as Mr. Soucy, Connecticut’s equivalent of George Washington Plunkitt, a Tammany Hall boss in New York City who ran his political operation from a bootblack stand. Mr. Plunkitt – “I seen my opportunities, and I took’em”  – was on his way out even before he was interviewed several times by reporter William Riordan, who later stitched together his embarrassingly frank interviews in a small book, “Plunkitt of Tammany Hall.”  Mr. Plunkitt claimed he was a casualty of the then new civil service system, the bane and ruination of political parties. Mr. Plunkitt’s Democratic Party, it may be noticed, has since adapted to the new reality and now counts unions and civil service workers as the I-joist of the Democratic Party.

The FBI wired Mr.  Soucy and provided him with a script with which he might ensnare the people – some young, others inexperienced in the ways of political lifers -- who surrounded Speaker of the State House Chris Donovan, then running for a U.S. Congressional seat left vacant by Chris Murphy, now a U.S. Senator.  The rancid odor issuing from the FBI sting operation persuaded Mr. Donovan to withdraw his Congressional bid in favor of Democrat Elizabeth Esty. The small-fry were easily ensnared. At some point during the FBI sting operation, the cover was blown – when and by whom we may never know – and most of the incumbent big fish, with some effort, swam upstream.

Hauling in the net, the Feds successfully prosecuted Mr. Donovan’s campaign manager, lower level campaign workers, and some benighted smoke shop owners drawn into the sting by George Washington Plunkitt Soucy, who teased fraudulent campaign donations from them by explaining that money made the wheels go round at the state Capitol. Or, as Mr. Soucy colorfully put it, “Politics is about the Benjamins. [Ben Franklin’s mug is on the highly inflated hundred dollar bill] This game runs on one thing -- dollars."

Other Soucyisms:

 "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 a wired FBI informant, Patrick Castagna, that he has been sowing the political ground in $10,000 increments, Mr. Castagna, the FBI straight man, doubts whether $10,000 is sufficient to buy a Connecticut politician. Inflation, after all, has taken a bite out of the purchasing power of the dollar.

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."

“Pictures [the Benjamins again] 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].”

When all the dirt was flushed down the drain, “the guy running in the 5^th District” gave up his campaign, and the FBI, thanks to the wired Soucy, managed to send a few Donovan subalterns to prison. But not Soucy the singing canary. The well connected union leader, now on probation, will spend six months in a half-way house because, according to one report,
“Soucy [sic] recordings and his help in raising and delivering about $28,000 in cash were instrumental in the indictments of two Donovan campaign officers and five roll-your-own owners or employees.”

The guys who got the Benjamins were inconvenienced but emerged unscathed from the FBI sting.

Mr. Plunkitt tells us why:

“Understand, I ain’t defendin‘ politicians of today who steal. The politician who steals is worse than a thief. He is a fool. With the grand opportunities all around for the man with a political pull, there’s no excuse for stealin’ a cent. The point I want to make is that if there is some stealin‘ in politics, it don’t mean that the politicians of 1905 are, as a class, worse than them of 1835. It just means that the old-timers had nothin’ to steal, while the politicians now are surrounded by all kinds of temptations and some of them naturally—the fool ones—buck up against the penal code.”

Social Issues And The Democrats

On “social issues,” as defined by Democrats in the Northeast, here is no “there” there within the Republican Party’s ancient regime.

Northeast Republicans have only one election card on their table – the economy, stupid. There ain’t no more. Slothful Northeast Republican Parties have permitted Democrats to define all the social issues; for them, such subjects as abortion on demand, gay marriage and the abolition of the death penalty are strictly verboten. Among gentlemen Republican moderates in Connecticut, discretion on social issues has been the better part of valor for more than two decades, which may help to explain why there are no more social issue averse Republicans in New England.

The last Republican moderate in Connecticut who surrendered to Democrats on social issues was State Senator Andrew Roraback. Recently appointed to the judiciary by Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy, Mr. Roraback lost his bid for the U.S. House of Representatives to present U.S. Rep Elizabeth Esty.

Mr. Roraback’s loss was preceded by other Republican Party losses. Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation used to be studded with a host of moderate Republicans, among them U.S. Representatives Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons and Chris Shays. They have all been replaced by left of center Democrats. Mr. Malloy and the Malloyalists are all progressive Democrats. The moderate Democrat also has become an endangered species, at least here in the Northeast. In other parts of the nation, moderate Democrats, taking a cue from unions, are abandoning Obamacare in droves. Not in Connecticut. Obamacare is to progressives in Connecticut what the Alamo was to patriotic Texans.  

Concerning the much more lively and combative progressive Democrats, the National Journal puts it this way: “’Especially on social issues, the center of gravity in the Democratic Party has moved in the more liberal direction,’ said Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration official and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. ‘There's a new generation of Democrats who see lots of gain and very little pain in stronger gun safety legislation and gay marriage.’”

That is simply another way of saying that the forward motion within the Democratic Party, since the advent of President Barack Obama and his Chicago political machine, has been to the left; progressives are liberals raised to the 3^rd power and beyond.

When a newspaper wished to bestow a compliment on Republican candidate for governor John McKinney it wrote of his father, Stewart McKinney, that the late 4^th District U.S. House Representative “was the type of Republican that has all but vanished from the political landscape: A New Englander who smartly blended fiscal conservatism with social progressivism, working on pro-environment legislation and supporting abortion rights.”

The 4^th District is now owned by Democrat Jim Himes. The 5^th District was owned by progressive Democrat Chris Murphy before he moved on to the U.S. Senate. The entire Connecticut U.S. Congressional delegation is progressive, and one of the reasons New Englanders who in the past neatly blended fiscal conservatism with social conservatism are now so rare a species in the Northeast is that all of them have been replaced by Democrats who are left of center on economic issues and purebred progressives on social issues.

Not only are there no social moderates, Republican or Democrat, in Connecticut’s one party state, there are no fiscal conservatives either. “Fiscal conservatism” is a blind used by Democrats in Connecticut who quickly abandon all pretense of a prudent economic policy once they achieve office.

If in the post Obama era you vote for a fiscally conservative, socially progressive Democrat , you will end up, after he has mingled in the course of a few months with brother progressives in the legislature, with a fiscally and socially progressive enthusiast of the purest water. The whole notion of a fiscal conservative who is also a social progressive is in much of the Northeast a rib tickling mythical construct – like a unicorn or a griffin.

The problem with the Connecticut Republican Party is NOT that it does not know how to stoop on social issues to conquer on fiscal issues. The problem is that the stooping no longer conquers – because Republicans have permitted the far left to define “social issues.” That is why the moderate Republican in New England is nearly an extinct species; he has ceded half the political battleground to the opposition and lost the war.

Republicans must learn how to broaden the “social issues” category to include the social ramifications of such obvious disasters as Obamacare, the one party state, crony capitalism, the disintegration of families, a penology that crowds courts and prisons with social delinquents while giving get-out-of-jail-early credits to murderous inmates, arrogant legislators who think it unnecessary to schedule hearings on bills that shape the future of the state, a tax, regulatory and spending policy that drives businesses out of Connecticut… and on and on. All these are SOCIAL ISSUES, women’s issues, minority issues, and left unattended, they will bring Connecticut to its knees, which is exactly the suppliant posture that politically suits the kind of progressive who regards the salvation state as the first and only resource for afflicted citizens.

Seven Snowballs In Hell

Apparently, snowballs do have a chance of not melting in the fiery furnace. A Hartford paper reported over the weekend that all seven members of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation have “offered sharp criticism after newspapers revealed the administration’s sweeping government surveillance programs, which monitor cellphone and internet traffic in the name of national security.”

U.S. Representative Jim Himes, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, thought the monitoring program was too intense and overbroad: “I feel like the government is breaking all kinds of precedent here in increasing the intensity of its surveillance. There's a balance to be struck and generally it feels like we have lost that balance in favor of over-intrusive investigation and [data] collection."

Having opposed covert national security operations during the administration of George Bush, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy had little choice but to object to the expansion of the program under President Barack Obama. Not to do so would have been to expose oneself to charges of hypocrisy. In the Christian ethical sphere, there are seven deadly sins; among journalists, there is only one – hypocrisy.

Mr. Murphy said, “Increasingly, our anti-terrorism efforts are happening outside the full view of the public and Congress. Whether you're talking about the drone program or the [National Security Agency], the way we fight wars today involves doing more things than ever in a covert manner. It makes it hard to do real oversight when we don't know or can't talk about these things in open session."

This is a juvenile view of covert operations; it simply assumes that covert operations in the modern age need not be covert. Currently there are more than a hundred organizations officially designated as terrorist by various non-terrorist governments. The planted axiom in Mr. Murphy’s worldview is that the executive department of the United States may wait until the U.S. Congress nods its approval before security agencies in the United States collect data that may frustrate the ambitions of, to mention but one terrorist organization among many, al Qaeda -- which, despite the view of Mr. Obama, is gathering strength in the frost that has followed the so called “Arab Spring.” The crowd of protesters that surrounded the embassy in Cairo before terrorists assaulted the consulate in Benghazi was shouting, “Obama, Obama, we are a thousand Osamas.” Listening to Mr. Murphy on national security, one begins to lament the loss to the U.S. Senate of Joe Lieberman.

The “balance” between liberty and security was much on the mind of U.S. Representatives Joe Courtney and John Larson. Members of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation, Mr. Courtney said, were poorly informed by Mr. Obama. “The notion that there was some broad based information-sharing with all members of Congress is not correct," Mr. Larson said. "I certainly respect the President's intentions and President Bush's before him, and the awesome responsibility that comes with wanting to make sure the nation is safe and secure but I remain convinced we have to be exceeding cautious in giving up our civil liberties. Everyone wants to get the bad guys, but what are we willing to give up for that?" Not immediately available for comment, U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro mailed in a Hallmark card: She was “deeply concerned,” as was U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty.

The ever cautious U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal was, according to one report, “awaiting more answers.” Putting on his former Attorney General’s hat, Mr. Blumenthal acknowledged that the surveillance practices “feel very intrusive and invasive of potential rights. We have to know what the extent of it was. If it was simply widespread, random without limitations or any sort of probable cause, there might be a case that it should not have been undertaken."

One wonders whether Mr. Blumenthal had in mind the “potential rights” outlined in the fourth amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which plainly states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

An opinion from Mr. Blumenthal – no stranger to affidavits during his more than 20 years’ service as Connecticut’s Attorney General – on the questionable affidavit that was used by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s office to allow an unprecedented search of Fox News reporter James Rosen’s private information would be most helpful.

Perhaps the chief question unaddressed by the members of Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional delegation is this: At what point does the secret and massive accumulation of raw data become counterproductive? In a haystack so enlarged, does it not become progressively more difficult to find such needles as, say, the Boston bombers? Is there a point of diminishing returns in data collection? When is more less?

The Sandy Hook Legislative Template

It is abundantly clear from remarks made by the members of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation, both before and after President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, that the litmus test of effective gun legislation is that such legislation should prevent future Sandy Hooks.

U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal said following Mr. Obama’s speech, in the course of which the president devoted several minutes to the mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School, “…we should be joining together to enact real change. Change that will help our law enforcement officials keep guns out of the hands of those who wish to do harm. Change that will ensure that laws on the books are enforced. Change that will strengthen our mental health system. And change that will keep our children safe from tragic acts of violence…” (emphasis mine) Mr. Blumenthal characterized that portion of the president’s State of the Union address in which he mentioned the slaughter of school children in Newtown as a “stirring call to action against gun violence in America, to prevent another tragedy like the one that befell Newtown (emphasis mine)”.

It should be noted that at this point the criminal investigation report on Sandy Hook is still in a process stage; a definitive report likely will be issued AFTER Connecticut’s General Assembly has produced its legislative remedies.

Thus far, investigators have not affirmed that the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, was suffering from a mental disorder. When a parent of one of the victims of the Sandy Hook slaughter asked Lieutenant Paul Vance, one of the lead investigators, to share with the parents of the victims Mr. Lanza’s medical records, she was told that such data must await a final report on “a pending criminal investigation.” The notion that Mr. Lanza was suffering from a mental disorder presently is little more than inference drawn from the horrific nature of the crime; no hard data thus far has been publically presented to show that Mr. Lanza was mentally incapacitated. Neither does the public record indicate that Mr. Lanza had taken psychotropic drugs; a few commentators have pointed to causal links between some psychotropic medications and mass murders.

Mr. Blumenthal is not the only member of Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional Delegation to link prophylactic gun control legislation with the Sandy Hook mass murders.

Newly elected U.S. Senator Chris Murphy said, “For those of us in Connecticut, we are still living with the horror of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, but the healing process is helped knowing we have a president who is going to do everything in his power to make sure no community ever has to go through this again. There are no excuses anymore(emphasis mine).''

Newly elected U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty was moved “by President Obama's call for real and meaningful change to save lives in the wake of the Newtown tragedy (emphasis mine)."

And longtime U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro thought it important to point out that “Victims of gun violence all had names. We should remember to honor them by putting an end to this (emphasis mine)."

The question arises: Are members of Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional Delegation overpromising?

Consider: As yet there is no data publically confirmed by criminal investigators or members of Governor Dannel Malloy’s investigatory committee that the Sandy Hook shooter was suffering from a mental defect instrumental in provoking his crime. None of the data released so far suggests that Mr. Lanza had been taking psychotropic drugs, which some claim to have triggered other mass murders in the United States and elsewhere.

No public data suggests that Mr. Lanza had lawful access to the weapons he brought with him to Sandy Hook Elementary School, an arsenal that included two semi-automatic pistols and a shotgun apparently left in the trunk of his mother’s car, in addition to the semi-automatic long rifle Mr. Lanza used to mow down 20 students and six faculty members of Sandy Hook Elementary School. The mass murderer’s weapon of choice was a very lethal semi-automatic Bushmaster rifle, but any of the weapons he carried with him, most especially the shotgun, might have been as lethal.

Connecticut’s gun laws are comprehensive but not quite as austere as those in Chicago, Illinois, Mr. Obama’s old political stomping grounds, which is pretty much the murder capital of the United States. Today in Chicago, there is more fatal gun violence than in the heyday of prohibition gangsters such as Al Capone, and none of the gun laws on Chicago’s books have effectively kept Chicago’s population “safe from tragic acts of violence,” to use the phrase often in the mouths of Connecticut politicians.

If preventing future Sandy Hooks is the intended purpose of national and state politicians who hope to “keep children safe” from determined mass killers such as Mr. Lanza, what efficacious laws more severe than those of Chicago -- short of repealing the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, so that both CRIMINALS and law abiding gun owners may be effectively disarmed – do the members of Connecticut’s Congressional Delegation suggest might accomplish their noble purpose?

Courant Endorsements

The last of the Hartford Courant’s increasingly irrelevant U.S. Congressional delegation endorsements appeared in the paper on Friday.

The Courant -- shocking the entire state – endorsed U.S. Representative Chris Murphy over former soft-porn WWE impresario Linda McMahon who, in the course of her run for Joe Lieberman’s soon to be vacant seat, snubbed Connecticut’s left of center media.

Courant endorsements are “conservative” in the bad sense. Connecticut’s congressional delegation is non-diverse; all the members of the delegation are Democrats, and it is clear, following the paper’s endorsement of Elizabeth Esty over moderate Republican Andrew Roraback, that the publisher of the paper and its editorial board members prefer it this way.

Adding its endorsement of Democrat Elizabeth Esty’s to that of former Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi, the Hartford Courant in its editorial, “Democrat's positions edge Andrew Roraback's bona fides,” tipped its hat to moderate Republican challenger Andrew Roraback’s bona fides, but found that his fides weren’t bona enough.

Mr. Roraback has billed himself during his campaign against Mrs. Esty, the wife of Governor Dannel Malloy’s Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), Daniel Esty, as a moderate Republican. In left of center editorial board lingo, “moderates” are much preferred over conservative and libertarian Republicans. Mr. Roraback earned his stripes as a moderate by setting himself apart from doctrinaire Republicans elsewhere in the country and flashing his bona fides as a “fiscal conservative,” code language to indicate his disassociation from disreputable“social conservatives,” not to mention toxic members of the much misunderstood– one might say purposelymisunderstood – members of the Tea Party.

Perhaps if Mr. Roraback had billed himself as a “maverick Republican,” following in the footsteps of former U.S. Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker, his fides would have been acceptable to the Courant’s editorial board. A maverick, as opposed to a moderate, is a Republican whose active distaste for all things Republican places him firmly in the Democratic camp.

Maverick Republicans are masked Democrats working within the party to subvert it. They are disguised sappers, ideological first cousins of the editorial writers at the Courant who generally advance super subtle reasons for bestrewing endorsements on leftist candidates.

Reason number one: The endorsed candidate has more practical experience than the challenger. Since Democrats in Connecticut, with invaluable assists from sappers, now command the governor’s office, the state House, the state Senate and the state Supreme Court -- Yes Virginia, the court is subtly affected by powerful partisan politicians, whatever you may have read about its vaunted courageous independence – the Courant’s rationale supports the present status quo Democratic hegemon.

The first casualty of this all too convenient rationale is the much cited journalistic doctrine that the proper mission of the media, when it is doing its job, is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Within Connecticut, comfortable Democrats-for-life occupying gerrymandered districts, such as U.S. Representatives John Larson and multimillionaire Rosa DeLauro, are among scores of incumbent Democrats unmolested by the state’s purported non-partisan left of center media. Consistently applied, the doctrine that one should always vote for the more experienced candidate is subversive of democracy, which depends upon a fluid and diverse governing class: It is an argument favoring permanent and unchanging governance – perpetual rule by incumbents.

It should be noted that in its Esty endorsement the Courant carved out an exception to its own general rule. Of the two candidates vying for the U.S. House in the 5^th District, Mr. Roraback has more governing experience. And he certainly meets the paper’s second criteria without which candidates for office fail to receive its endorsements: The potential endorsee must forswear any political alliance with national Republicans on so called “social issues.” In this regard, true believing editorialists on the left reflexively support progressive Democrats.

Mrs. Esty, more reliably left wing than Mr. Roraback, was blessed with the Courant’s endorsement -- because the paper’s principle ideological duty, now and forever, is to hold back a fictitious horde of conservatives from assaulting the gates of paradise, a utopian vision of governance in which the governing authority overwhelms what social scientists sometimes call mediating institutions: the family, the church, voluntary associations, independent business enterprises, a non-partisan media and, somewhere close to the top of the list, a reified Republican Party dedicated to weaning the individual from a paternalistic state

Abortion Extremists

Andrew Roraback is a “fiscal conservative,” which is to say he is not a “social conservative,” which is to say he is pro-abortion but not sufficiently enthusiastic concerning abortion to merit the approval of NARAL Pro-Choice Connecticut, a pro-abortion group that will admit no exceptions to abortion on demand.

The very term “social conservative” is highly misleading. There are no congressional bills or judicial decisions that have no social ramifications. Everything politicians say and do and think is said and done and thought with a view towards enforcing or changing the society affected by human action. Even budgets – the last real budget was passed by the U.S. Congress in1997 before Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008 -- profoundly affect the social sphere. The science of economics, dismal though it may be, is a science of human action.

Democrats Call for Unity

Speaker of the state House Chris Donovan should have received by Monday a call from John Olsen, President of the AFL-CIO, beseeching the Democratic nominee for the U.S. House in the 5^th District to withdraw from the race.

Not a few members of Mr. Donovan’s campaign staff have been arrested by the FBI; other of Mr. Donovan’s political associates are even now being wrestled to the ground by FBI agents and prosecutors intent on uncovering what they know and when they knew it about  fraudulent campaign contributions.

Crony Capitalist Democrats

It began as a “First Five” program and then, as happens with the usual governmental fix, quickly expanded, while retaining in its name the modest number “Five.”

The day after Democratic voters in Connecticut went to the primary polls and chose Elizabeth Esty over Chris Dovovan in the 5^th District campaign for the U.S. Senate, Mr. Donovan having caught his foot in an FBI snare, Governor Dannel Malloy announced he had given to Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, a $25 million ten-year forgivable loan at 1 percent, a $5 million job training grant, a grant up to $5 million for the building's alternative energy systems and up to $80 million in urban and industrial reinvestment tax credits.

Bridgewater is the eighth recipient of state largess in Mr. Malloy’s “Next Five” program; the name of the program, open ended to any business chosen by the governor as a fitting recipient of taxpayer dollars, has been changed to comport with reality, the “Next” suggesting that there will be no terminus beyond “Five.” It does not take long for new governors to become conversant in Orwellian Newspeak.

The reality is: The state of Connecticut is now in the corporate bribing business.

The seven companies that so far have joined the former “First Five” program are: Cigna in Bloomfield, ESPN in Bristol, NBC Sports in Stamford, Alexion Pharmaceuticals in New Haven, CareCentrix in Hartford, Sustainable Building Solutions in North Haven and, most recently, Deloitte in Stamford.

As befits the largest hedge fund in the world, the CEO of Bridgewater, founder and chief investment officer Ray Dalio, is the highest paid hedge fund manager in the world at $3.9 billion per annum. Mr. Dalio will be moving his company from Westport, Connecticut to Stamford, Connecticut. “First Five” originally was intended to lure out of state businesses into Connecticut.

If Occupy Wall Street were still in business, tents would be sprouting somewhere near Stamford's Harbor Point development where, according to co-CEO of Bridgewater Greg Jensen, the company intends to construct a 750,000-square-foot of space in two buildings on a forested campus. Mr. Jensen’s yearly salary was not mentioned in news reports touting Mr. Malloy’s big catch, but it’s probably up there in the stratosphere of other one percenters who’s fannies have been spanked by Occupiers and their sympathizers in Connecticut’s General Assembly, Speaker of the House Chris Donovan among them. Mr. Donovan’s jihad against under taxed hedge fund operators is legendary.

The Occupiers might have had a sympathetic U.S. Representative in Mr. Dovovan had the FBI not rooted up some corruption truffles in his campaign. Last Tuesday Mr. Donovan was womped by Elizabeth Esty, wife of Mr. Malloy’s Commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) Daniel Esty. Mrs. Esty is believed to be a moderate Democrat. She will be facing moderate Republican State Senator Andrew Roraback in the general election.

The original progressives, like their modern counterparts, looked upon big business with a baleful eye; Teddy Roosevelt played a prominent role in the election of 1912 by vowing to break up the Big Trusts whose path to power in the economy ran through Washington D.C. and state houses.

Oddly, in the modern period, trust busters tend to be conservative Republicans, who are convinced that too-large-to-fail businesses should not be artificially propped up by Washington and state house crony capitalists. In the progress of progressivism from 1912 to 2012, the impulse to level the economic playing field by removing governmental preferments showered upon large businesses by incumbent politicians thirsty for campaign contributions gravitated from progressive Democrats to anti-crony capitalist conservatives.

The architecture of Mr. Malloy’s “Next Five” program virtually assures that capital investment cash provided by taxpayers will flow to mega-businesses such as Bridgewater, thus giving too-large-to-fail corporations a leg up over their smaller competitors, who are left to struggle in the usual Darwinian economic universe that rewards free enterprisers who have earned their own success without battening on the teat of Trust enablers.

Here is a difference between the two parties that Roraback the Moderate Republican might well stress in his campaign against Mrs. Esty, doomed by her association with the Malloy administration to support the transference of tax dollars from Social Security recipients to Mr. Dalio’s gold lined pockets.

The best, most efficient and least corrupt way to spur business activity in Connecticut is to reduce business taxes – for all businesses, not for those relatively prosperous select few whose tin cups are filled by phony progressive crony capitalist governors. Now that Mr. Donovan has been sidelined by an FBI sucker punch, real 1912 progressives in the state could use an honest political broker.

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.

Huey Donovan

"We can tax the millionaires in Washington and we can make Connecticut a better place for working families” – 5th District Democratic U.S. House candidate Chris Donovan

"Don't tax you, don't tax me. Tax the guy behind the tree"—Russell Long

Even the most progressive politician of his day, Russell’s father Huey Long, knew the scheme wouldn’t work; but it was a winner as a populist campaign pitch. Within the Democratic Party of his day, Russell was acknowledged as an authority on tax law. As such, he became an ardent advocate of tax breaks for business. “I have become convinced,” said Russell, most certainly not a chip off his father’s progressive block, “you're going to have to have capital if you're going to have capitalism."

One suspects that progressive leader of the state House of Representatives Chris Donovan knows this. However, the deathless scheme, endemic in the Democratic Party, to convince the tax paying public that someone may be found – perhaps hiding behind a tree in Washington – to pay debts incurred by reckless politicians marches on and on and on.

Even Governor Dannel Malloy, who styles himself a progressive, focused in his first budget on broadening the tax base. A revenue stream that depends chiefly on the ups and downs of Wall Street fed millionaires, a great number of whom in Connecticut are hedge fund managers, is doomed to fail. There are, in Connecticut and the nation, too few millionaires chasing too many debts.

Mr. Donovan is one of three Democrats vying for the seat in the U.S. House of Representatives soon to be left vacant by U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, who has set his sights on U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman’s soon to be vacant seat. Former state representative Elizabeth Esty, whose husband Daniel was appointed Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) by Mr. Malloy last and Daniel Roberti are also announced candidates. On the Republican side of the barricades, Justin Bernier, a member of former Governor Jodi Rell's cabinet who ran for the seat in 2010, Mike Clark, chairman of the Farmington Town Council and a former FBI agent, businesswoman Lisa Wilson-Foley, businessman Mark Greenberg, who also ran in 2010, and state senator Andrew Roraback are campaigning for the seat.

Most Republicans running for office who have some personal experience with business are familiar with the principle underlying business flight, which may be stated as follows: Whatever you tax tends to disappear. If you tax millionaire hedge fund operators who live in Fairfield’s Gold Coast, both hedge fund businesses and its employees will leech out of the state in search of more favorable profit margins elsewhere. Mr. Malloy has been known to worry in public that Connecticut’s neighboring states would benefit from exorbitant taxes on hedge fund millionaires, however popular and politically beneficial the prospect of taxing millionaires might be to progressive politicians. Like water, businesses flow from high cost to low coast states, and taxes are one of the controllable components of the cost of doing business.

Mr. Donovan favors taxing millionaires to pay for a budget that has increased threefold since the last Democratic governor in Connecticut, William O’Neil, held office. And it is quite simply an exercise in futility to point out to him that the state is not suffering from a revenue problem. The threefold increase in state spending within a little more than two decades is undeniable proof that the state is suffering from a spending problem the present Speaker of the State House of Representative has no interest in addressing.

The same principle of disappearing opportunities applies to politically inspired increases in the minimum wage, a populist measure supported by Mr. Donovan, whose ambition it is to propel Connecticut into first place among states that impose the highest minimum wage. Beyond a certain level, the minimum wage forces companies that cannot afford it to cut back on employment or go out of business. Costly boosts in the minimum wage affects only those employers whose profit margins are slight. Capital rich mega-companies will be able to absorb Mr. Donovan’s impositions, but these are not companies that hire workers who have in the past been paid the kind of wages Mr. Donovan hopes to boost through his minimum wage legislation.

People with little or no working history are those most likely to be adversely impacted by Mr. Donovan’s bill. Low income workers and teenagers in blighted urban areas who hope to place their feet on the bottom rung of the ladder of success will find that the rungs have been hacked off by legislators in a Democratic dominated General Assembly who for reasons of political expedience had yielded to Mr. Donovan’s anti-business ideology.

A business that might hire a child of the city making his way valiantly and honorably through circumstances Mr. Donovan little understands needs capital to pay his workers’ wages. Mr. Donovan has yet to be convinced that you cannot have capitalism without capital. If he succeeds in making his way to the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, home of the magic money tree, it is possible he may never learn what children of the city already know: When the profit margins of businessmen who are likely to hire them is reduced, the prospect of their being hired is proportionally reduced.

Ripening Scandals: Solyndra And DEEP Do-Do

The Solyndra energy scandal is beginning to ripen.

ABC News is now reporting that a top fundraiser for President Barack Obama who was hired to help oversee the administration’s energy loan program “pushed and prodded career Department of Energy officials to move faster in approving a loan guarantee for Solyndra, even as his wife's law firm was representing the California solar company, according to internal emails made public late Friday.”

And here in Connecticut, Jon Lender of the Hartford Courant is reporting that the wife of state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) commissioner Daniel Esty, Mrs. Elizabeth Esty, a former state representative now running for the U.C. Congress, has received campaign contributions from Northeast Utilities, an energy company regulated by her husband:

“With controversy already enveloping the $205,000 in consulting work that Daniel C. Esty did for Northeast Utilities before he became commissioner of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, it turns out that NU executives also have contributed to the congressional campaign of Esty's wife, Democrat Elizabeth Esty, public records show.”