Foley Charges Partly Vindicated By Critic

There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea -- T.S. Elliot

Kevin Rennie, a Harford Courant columnist, is regarded by some in politics as the Torquemada of Connecticut commentators – especially in matters of what one might call political ethics. Many politicians have felt his bite and winced.

After an appearance on WFSB’s “Face the State” with Dennis House, Tom Foley, who is expected in the near future to announce his bid for governor on the Republican Party ticket, had much to wince at.

In the most recent Rennie column, Mr. Foley was still mercilessly flailed – “Foley served a dog's breakfast to viewers in his return as a candidate for governor. Foley was a flailing amateur. He's been unable to provide proof for some of his allegations, despite claiming they met some journalistic standard that lives a solitary life in Foley's head” – but into this whipping crept a softer tone.

One of Mr. Foley’s supposed boneheaded allegations was that the relationship between Governor Dannel Malloy’s former media liaison and flack catcher, Roy Occhiogrosso, and Connecticut crony capitalist head of state was unseemly, profitable to them both and unethical under the standard of ethics embraced by Jesus Christ -- even though the bi-profitable relationship was perfectly legal. A transcription of Mr. Foley’s remarks may be found here at “Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes From A Blue State.”

In the course of his “Face the State” interview, Mr. Foley noted that he was relying on multiple reliable sources who wished to remain anonymous, after which he spoke the fatal words: “But these are all things that have been told to me by more than one reliable source, and so it meets a journalistic standard.”

The intake of breath among Connecticut scriveners was audible from New London to Hartford. One could smell brimstone in the air: Who does he think he is, Woodward or Bernstein? These were the two renowned reporters who, relying at the beginning of their investigation chiefly on a single reliable source, “Deep Throat,” finally shoved Tricky Dick Nixon off the political stage? “Deep Throat” remained anonymous for decades after the Nixon putsch, finally outing himself just before he kicked the bucket.

The gauntlet thrown down to Connecticut’s media by Mr. Foley – just investigate this stuff – has now been taken up in part by Mr. Rennie.

And the result is a softer, more gentle Rennie:

“This is state government, so there's always money to be found for friends, no matter what the condition of the economy. I overstated the case last week when I wrote that the contract to Global Strategies had been awarded by competitive bid (emphasis mine).

“Three insiders at Access Health CT invited three public relations companies to submit proposals for the lucrative contract. They did not open the process to the many firms that could meet the basic requirements of a public relations contract whether with innovative or stale ideas. The insiders included former Enfield Democratic state Rep. Kathleen Tallarita, Access Health CT's head of government relations and communications. In 2012, Tallarita became the rare suburban legislator to lose her seat in a party primary.”

This sort of thing happens frequently in Connecticut politics: Backs are scratched; friends are rewarded, enemies punished. Good investigative reporters occasionally uncover dubious, possibly unethical practices when a gored enemy plops a story on their desks. These sources are generally given protective anonymity as the reporter turns over a few rocks and examines the hitherto undisclosed swarm of ethical muck beneath them.

In a one party state, the possibility of such disclosures is markedly reduced. And there is no reporter in the state who does not now know that Connecticut has crossed the bar: The state’s entire U.S. Congressional Delegation is solidly Democratic; the Democratic Party boasts in Mr. Malloy its first Democratic governor in more than two decades; the state’s General Assembly is solidly Democratic. We know from the history we do not wish to repeat that the one party state is more successfully corrupt than the state that has an active two party system in which political power is evenly and justly shared. It’s what you think you know for certain and don’t that kills you. In a one party state the rocks are larger and more immovable.

Moving the rock that seals the tomb requires a media that is unflinchingly non-partisan, alert, energetic and courageous.

Foley’s Charges

Here is an accurate transcript of a conversation between Dennis House of Face the State and former Ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley. Mr. Foley hopes to secure the Republican Party’s nomination for governor. Neither Mr. Foley nor Governor Dannel Malloy has as yet formally announced their respective bids for the governor’s office.

A great deal of commentary – most of it critical of Mr. Foley’s comments -- already has preceded the posting of a transcript. But it’s always a good idea to put first things first: First the transcript, then the commentary:

DH: You also said something rather provocative on Tuesday. You suggested that the governor may be trading favors and when a reporter asked you for specifics, you did not. Can you do that today?

TF: Yeah, absolutely. You know last spring I was working with Senator Markley to introduce a bill to raise the ethical standards at the Capitol. And I've just been really disappointed by what goes on at the capitol and what I've learned about the relationships up there, the conflicts of interest. I’m concerned and in some ways disgusted, and I think the governor in some ways contributed this. I think he had an opportunity when he was elected to talk about transparency and to set a standard, and he hasn't. In fact, he may have taken it to a new level, so…

DH: What kind of examples can you offer us today?

TF: Well, first of all, I’ll give you some examples, but first let me preface it by saying I’m not a news organization. I don’t have a staff to look into these things and investigate them. But these are all things that have been told to me by more than one reliable source, and so it meets a journalistic standard. And they’re things that are believed, so they’re a problem whether they’re true or not. It seems that there are (sic) some substance to them, but I can’t confirm that they’re true. So, let me give you some examples.  Umm, Dan Esty. Dan Esty is the head of a consulting firm…

DH: The Commissioner of DEEP…

TF: Yeah, he is now. But this is going back before the election. And it’s believed, or I've heard, a lot of people believe, that at his consulting firm, Esty…. Umm, Environmental Partners, I believe it’s called, or some entity that he controls, was compensating Dan Malloy…

DH: As a candidate?

TF: Well, not as a candidate, but either with consulting fees or compensation or something of value. And in fact it was not a (unintelligible), so that’s a problem in itself. So, this might have been prior to his declaring himself a candidate or during the time he was a candidate. (Unintelligible) I hope not, I don’t know. So, as soon as Governor Malloy is elected, he’s made a commissioner of DEEP. So, to me, that’s improper. It’s a conflict of interest; it’s a favor for something that was done. And in that instance, if that was the case, that potentially is an illegal contribution. When I ran against Governor Malloy, he was fully engaged in the race. So there was no way he was performing any work for Mr. Esty, if he was being paid anything. So it was… should have been a contribution if it was during the campaign. So anyhow, this is something I've heard and that people believe. I welcome the governor coming out and explaining, saying either that it’s not true, or explaining that it’s different from what I am describing.  So let me give you another one. Roy Occhiogrosso. You know Roy huh?

DH: Oh yeah.

TF: He was the governor’s campaign manager and, I think, ran communications and was a spokesman in the administration. Earlier this year, Roy Occhiogrosso left the administration and went back to his political consulting firm, the Global Strategies group. And very recently, they’re awarded a very significant contract to handle, I believe, communications and PR for the Health Exchange for the state, which is a quasi-government entity, but their website is “pt.gov,” so clearly a government entity. Totally improper, if this is the case of what happened, to me, that somebody leaves the administration and turns around and within a very short period of time a company that he’s a partner in receives a very lucrative government contract. Umm, Andrew McDonald, a very close buddy of the governor, now on our Supreme Court, was a partner in a law firm called Sullivan and… excuse me, (Pullman and Comley), and they do a lot of legal work for the municipalities that issue bonds. It is commonly believed among first selectmen that I know that if you don’t use Pullman and Comley for your bond issue, it's much less likely that the governor is going to approve it, and he has sole authority to approve all bond issues. And so they tend to use that firm to make sure that their bond offering goes through. Whether that’s true or not, the mere perception that that’s the case is creating a distortion in moving business to a firm improperly. Finally, I got one more. Do you want to know…

DH: No, go ahead…

TF: It’s been publicly reported that there’s been issues with the governor’s travels. He took two trips to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland -- It’s quite an expensive trip -- and another trip to China. And it’s publicly reported, and I think the governor’s office has publicly admitted that some of the expenses of this trip was (sic) paid by the UConn Foundation. The UConn foundation is primarily a private funded organization. People who make those kinds of contributions assume that they are providing money for UConn, for the education of the students at UConn and making the program as good as it can be. It’s an improper use of the funds. And I also understand that at least one board member was called by a very senior member of the administration. A lot of pressure was put on them, and they were (sic) reluctantly agreed to provide these funds. So these are examples of things that I consider improper. If I were governor, no one would even think these things were possible, because would set a standard that was so high that even the perception of a conflict, or a friend, or someone in your family getting business as a result of your holding office wouldn't be believed.

DH: We obviously don‘t have the staff here at Face the State to confirm these allegations in the course of this program. I’ll obviously have to look into them. Are there any names of first selectmen and selectwomen you can offer who have made these allegations to you?

TF: Not that I want to share. Obviously, I wouldn't want to share. But there’s more than one; let me just say that. And let me also say that I call on the governor to address these issues, because if they… I hope they’re actually not true, because it would be good for the citizens of Connecticut if they were not true. But these are things that are commonly accepted at the Capitol as being true. And people are: Oh, that’s just the way things are around here, or that’s the way the governor does business.  I think the governor should come out and explain to us whether or not these things that people believe are true. And if they are, and if here’s an explanation for them that would make sense to reasonable people, explain that too. And if he doesn't, I hope the media will go and look into these things. The media has the resources; that’s one of their roles. And let’s get to the bottom of this.

DH: [Well, certainly after this] we’ll look into the allegations. And I know that other reporters certainly will who are watching this program. If these turn out to be false, these allegations, do you think it damages your credibility as a candidate?

TF: No, because I think that the perception that this administration does not have high ethical standards, that favors are being done for friends and family, is there. And the mere fact that it’s there is a problem, whether these things are happening or not, and a good leader doesn't allow that perception to exist. They set a standard, and their own behavior makes people understand that these things couldn't be true. So, if I were governor, no one would be believing these things about my administration.

DH: Do you believe Dannel Malloy to be an unethical governor?

TF: Well, if these things are true, he certainly has a very low ethical standard. Some of these things may or may not be illegal, but they certainly, to me, get nowhere near the threshold of solid leadership and ethical standards that should be present in Connecticut’s government.

The commentary so far is pretty much what might be expected from a media that is left of center and overly protective of Governor Dannel Malloy. The chief concern of a media that lists to the left lies in shoring up the left.

Some commentators may take Mr. Foley’s remark that his representations during the face the State interview met a “journalistic standard” as very far from the mark. But it is clear from his remarks that Mr. Foley was addressing the standard of a “plausible charge.” He said he had more than one unidentified “reliable source,” and the charges, as he outlined them, were far from amorphous. Indeed, they were specific enough to arouse the wrath of Malloyalists both inside and outside Democratic Party precincts.

The preface to Mr. Foley’s charges is not unimportant: “Well, first of all, I’ll give you some examples, but first let me preface it by saying I’m not a news organization. I don’t have a staff to look into these things and investigate them. But these are all things that have been told to me by more than one reliable source, and so it meets a journalistic standard. And they’re things that are believed, so they’re a problem whether they’re true or not. It seems that there are (sic) some substance to them, but I can’t confirm that they’re true.”

Mr. Foley here is not playing the part of a lawyer prosecuting a case. He is issuing an invitation to the media to take up and investigate assumed improprieties.

Now, a charge of impropriety must begin somewhere. Charges at the beginning of an investigation must meet a standard of plausibility; certitude concerning the charge follows an exhaustive ongoing investigation.

Here’s an example: Before anyone in Connecticut was certain that former Governor John Rowland had committed improprieties, there were rumors of improprieties circulating throughout the General Assembly.  Some plausible charges were tossed on the desktop of a number of investigative reporters, reporters pursued leads and an official investigation was opened at the conclusion of which Mr. Rowland pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to steal honest services. No reporter in the state refused to investigate the presumed improprieties swirling about Mr. Rowland because they were mere unproven allegations.

Here are the first two paragraphs in a story covering Mr. Foley’s face the State appearance:

“Escalating his attack in a campaign that technically hasn't begun, Republican Tom Foley blasted Gov. Dannel P. Malloy Sunday as a chronically unethical leader.

“Foley, who says he has not yet decided whether he is running for governor, offered a blistering, unsubstantiated, indictment of Malloy as running an administration of back-slapping insiders ‘getting special deals.’ Appearing on WFSB's ‘Face the State’ Sunday morning, Foley declined to offer on-the-record evidence to back up his charges, saying that his allegations meet ‘journalistic standards.’"

Well now, a charge made by one politician of another is very far removed from an “indictment,” a legal term that presupposes a definitive investigation. Legal indictments generally are presented by legally convened and sworn grand juries that have considered and passed on evidence preceding a trial. All pre-investigatory charges are by definition “unsubstantiated.”

At this point, Mr. Foley has merely challenged Mr. Malloy to answer his charges: “And let me also say that I call on the governor to address these issues.”  He acknowledges he has not the resources of a newspaper at his command: “Well, first of all, I’ll give you some examples, but first let me preface it by saying I’m not a news organization. I don’t have a staff to look into these things and investigate them.” He hopes the rumors and innuendos are not true: “I hope they’re actually not true, because it would be good for the citizens of Connecticut if they were not true.” But he cannot deny that the charges, if true, are consequential.  At the very least, the charges made by Mr. Foley rise to a level above that of water cooler gossip, but his repeated pleadings that the media should investigate what one reporter dismissively termed “back-slapping insiders ‘getting special deals’” is infused with the desperation of a man who senses that Connecticut’s investigatory apparatus will not oblige him.       

Race And Politics In Connecticut

The 2014 Democratic campaign for urban hegemony is now officially underway.

It will involve the usual tousle among Democrats for political prestige and power in Connecticut’s larger cities. During his first campaign for governor, then Mayor of Stamford Dan Malloy – on becoming governor, Dan requested that the media refer to him henceforward as Dannel -- easily captured the urban vote and slid past Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Foley by the slenderest of margins. Mr. Malloy, once again in his reelection contest, may face Mr. Foley -- or some other worthy Republican champion; State Senator John McKinney has announced and Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton is teasing from the sidelines -- and the remembrance of slender margins past has caused some wonderment among the state’s left of center media concerning Mr. Malloy’s recent campaign endorsements.

A Hartford newspaper has wondered aloud editorially whether it is politically prudent for the governor to pick winners and losers in urban primaries. Mr. Malloy recently traveled to New Haven to offer a ringing endorsement of Toni Harp as mayor, even though it had been widely reported that Ms. Harp’s now deceased husband is the city’s most celebrated tax scofflaw.  Most recently, the former mayor of Stamford publicly rejected the mayoralty choice of Stamford’s Democratic Town Committee by endorsing a non-party endorsed candidate.  People took notice. This is not the way to gain friends and influence Democrats in Stamford. Then too, the governor’s primary endorsements feed the growing apprehension that Mr. Malloy just can’t restrain himself from upsetting apple carts and sticking his thumb in every warm pie.

The Connecticut Republican Party, unfortunately, has withered away in the state’s larger cities. Urban populations, fleeing urban problems, have left behind a minority residue wholly at the mercy of a party that has made no serious attempt to drive people at the economic margins of society into jobs and social configurations that would not leave them at the mercy of urban gangs and ubiquitous social service agencies. President Bill Clinton’s noble attempt to “end welfare as we know it” has in recent times suffered a perhaps irreversible decline under an increasingly progressive regime. Any attempt seriously to address the issue of social disintegration in cities – fatherless families or single parent families locked into a ridged and unalterable social service structure -- is hooted down as an indication of racist bias.

Republicans in Connecticut are so fearful of being thus tainted that they have simply surrendered the “social issues” front  to Democrats who, especially in cities, are finding it more and more difficult to quiet a restive population that wants what Martin Luther King said it wanted half a century ago – their piece of the American dream. Among African Americans in cities, fifty years after the “I Have A Dream” speech in Washington D.C., the traditional African American family, robustly restored in Northern cities after the Civil War, is now a byword.

The decimation of the African American family has accelerated at a rapid pace from the 1960s forward. The statistics are too astonishing to be any longer ignored.  The most recent Urban Institute Report finds that 17 percent of African-American children lived in a home with their mother but not their father in 1950. By 2010, the number had increased to 50 percent. Out of wedlock childbirths from 1965 to 2010 increased from 8 to 41 percent; the figure today has risen to an astonishing 72 percent. In 1950, the number of African American women married and living with their spouses was 53 percent. That figure has been reduced today to 25 percent.

Many of these figures have been in the public domain since 1965, when then Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan from New York released “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.”  The recent Urban Institute report updates the figures to 2010. The Moynihan report is not dated in its principal conclusion: “…at the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family. It is the fundamental source of the weakness of the Negro community at the present time.”

There is a Berlin Wall of silence surrounding these figures – and others: On average, 1,876 black babies are aborted every day in the United States, and black women, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, are more than 5 times as likely as white women to have an abortion; African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. The conclusion that Mr. Moynihan has drawn in his earlier report is no less pertinent today than it was in 1965, two years after Martin Luther King had let loose his thunderclap before the Lincoln Memorial.

These figures, it may safely be predicted, will play NO part in any urban election in Connecticut – none. If you know what the problem is, hard solutions offer themselves. But politically, any effective remedy that disturbs the status quo causes a tighter breathing and chills the bones of politicians to zero. The road to Hell, as Martin Luther King well knew, is paved with cowardice; only courage can set you free. 

Walker In Connecticut

Republicans this year asked Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, much maligned by union folk, to give the keynote address at the Prescott Bush Awards dinner in Stamford.

Mr. Walker is a grown-up, so his address was low key, interspersed with amusing vignettes. There was very little coverage of Mr. Walker’s remarks in Connecticut’s media. Most of the media accounts went for the color and passed over the discomforting  substance.

Unions were protesting outside the building, and someone was thoughtful enough to bring along the usual protest props. A photograph of one protesting group shows several union workers wearing cardboard cutout faces of the Koch brothers pulling puppet strings attached to another union worker wearing a Walker face. There are pictures galore in the Greenwich Times report: of Republican Senate leader John McKinney, who was given the Prescott Bush award this year; of Mr. Walker; of prominent Republicans in the state and of Linda McMahon, always good for a line or two in a lede story.

But one searches in vain for comprehensive coverage of Mr. Walker’s address and finds just a few scattered references here and there, studding the stories like glittering political sequins.

When readers of newspapers in the Lincoln era wanted to know what two major politicians debating each other for a Senate seat in Illinois actually said during their debates, they had only to turn to their newspapers to find there the transcribed speeches of Abe Lincoln and Steven Douglas. Republican papers polished the Lincoln oratory, and Democratic papers polished the apple for Douglas. Those days are gone, and with them a good amount of newspaper credibility – not to mention readers.

What precisely did Mr. Walker say to Republicans at the Prescott Bush Dinner?

Ameriborn News TV put up the speech here.  And so while Mr. Walker’s address is accessible, the substance of the address has not been sufficiently reported in Connecticut’s print media.

Republicans, Mr. Walker said to the sea of Republican faces in his audience, have reason to be optimistic. Republicans now control governor’s offices in 30 states. This was not always the case: “A lot of those states in 2010 were pretty blue. In fact, in my case, four years ago when I thought about running for governor and announced in April of 2009, everything in our state was controlled by Democrats: both Houses of the legislature, the governor, the lieutenant governor, both U.S. Senator’s and the majority members of the House of representatives.”

Surely Republicans in the audience, if not union members in the streets outside, could well appreciate the parallel circumstances. Connecticut has been drifting in the direction of a one party state for years, a fait accompli celebrated by Democrats four years ago when then Mayor of Stamford Dan Malloy -- Dannel Malloy, since becoming governor -- won his contest against Republican contender Tom Foley, who lost to Mr. Malloy by the thinnest of margins. Currently there are 52 Republicans and 99 Democrats in the State House and 14 Republicans and 22 Democrats in the State Senate. Democrats have controlled the Senate since 1996 and the House since 1986. Following Mr. Malloy’s victory, Democrats captured all the political marbles. As a practical political matter, this meant that Democrats in the state no longer needed to involve Republicans in their deliberations.

Upon assuming office, Mr. Malloy felt confident enough to shoo Republican leaders in the General Assembly out of the room when he and Majority Democrats were cobbling together a budget satisfactory to SEBAC, a coalition of unions authorized to negotiate contracts with the governor. Marching under the banner of “shared sacrifice,” Mr. Malloy imposed on the state the largest tax increase in its history. This increase followed the second largest tax increase in state history, the Lowell Weicker income tax of 1991. After having given a leg up to Mr. Malloy during a special session of the General Assembly called to address the state’s deepening spending problems, Republicans once again, unsurprisingly, find themselves in Coventry on current budget discussions. One party states do not need bystander parties to govern.

The Malloy-SEBAC budget was never in balance. Even worse, negotiated incremental raises in salaries and benefits for union worker amounting to about 9 percent far into the future tied the governor’s hands behind his back in future budget negotiations. His school initiatives were opposed by teacher unions that benefited from his largess, and red ink, like some impish devil, kept popping out of the budget woodwork every time Comptroller Kevin Lembo screwed the jewelers loop into his eye.

Wisconsin and Connecticut are trains passing each other in the night in different directions. Mr. Walker thought Connecticut Republicans could learn important lessons from his own bruising but ultimately successful campaign and political strategy.

“Today,” Mr. Walker continued, “everything’s flipped. Both my legislative houses are Republican. The governor, one of the U.S. Senate seats and the majority seats in the House of Representatives are Republican.”

This political miracle was received with exuberant applause from Republicans in the audience. Wisconsin showcased a breathtaking change of events. The union members prowling and scowling outside the building for the benefit of news photographers hungry for color have not yet recovered from the whiplash. John Olsten, the President of the Connecticut AFL-CIO, groused, "He [Mr. Walker] surely is not what you would call a fit in the state of Connecticut.” Nor, come to think of it, are any of few Walker-like Republicans in the General Assembly; such would seem to be the message from both leading Democrats and the governor, who have successfully rendered politically impotent any Republican presumptuous enough to unfurl Mr. Malloy’s “fair share” flag by cutting spending.

Such was the case in Wisconsin before the advent of Mr. Walker. Almost in the twinkling of an eye, the stage set, the actors and the political narrative all changed.

Democratic Demagoguery in Connecticut

The first shots of the 2014 gubernatorial campaign were fired by Malloyalist pit bull Roy Occhiogrosso and state Democratic Party Chairwoman Nancy DiNardo shortly after former Ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley announced at the end of November his availability for the Republican nomination for governor.

Asked by a reporter to comment on Mr. Foley’s early entrance into the gubernatorial arena, Mr. Occhiogrosso sniffed, “We don’t comment on Tom Foley’s political ambitions. He lost one race. He’s more than welcome to lose another.”

Ms. DiNardo, coloring within the lines of Mr. Occhiogrosso’s curt dismissal, said in a media release, “Tom Foley just doesn’t get it. Like Mitt Romney, he doesn’t understand the challenges that average hardworking people face. He is just another out-of-touch vulture capitalist who sees the average resident as something less. It’s a toxic world view that the voters of this country rejected just a few weeks ago. And if ambassador Foley runs again, he’ll find out exactly what the voters of Connecticut think of his economic philosophy.”

Mr. Foley lost the governor’s race to Mr. Malloy in 2010, owing to the additional votes Mr. Malloy was able to garner while appearing on the “Working Families Party” line. In a recent suit decided by Connecticut’s Supreme Court, the court awarded the Republican Party the top line on the ballot in the recently concluded elections because Mr. Foley had received more votes on the Republican Party line than did Mr. Malloy on the Democratic Party line. The race was exceedingly close. Charges during the race that Mr. Foley was a “vulture capitalist,” as Mrs. DiNardo toxically puts it, did not appear to do much damage to Mr. Foley’s prospects, who lost to Mr. Malloy by a slender 6,400 vote margin. Democrats in Connecticut outnumber Republicans roughly by a ratio of two to one.

Other Republicans who have shown interest in running against Democratic Governor Dannel Malloy are perhaps, to Mrs. DiNardo’s way of thinking, less “out of touch’ in the toxic world of Connecticut politicking.

Both the Republican House and Senate leaders in the General Assembly, Senator John McKinney and House leader Larry Cafero, as well as Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, have signaled their interests in running for governor, and all have considerably more direct experience in issues affecting the state than Ms. DiNardo and Mr. Occhiogrosso might wish.

The knock on Linda McMahon, when she ran twice for the U.S. Senate, was that she had little direct experience in politics, was redundantly wealthy, and made her millions in a way that caused some in the media to wrinkle their noses with displeasure. True, soon to be Senior Senator from Connecticut Dick Blumenthal and U.S. House fixture Rosa DeLauro are also millionaires, Mr. Blumenthal having been fortunate enough to marry a woman whose father owns the Empire State Building in New York and some few other valuable properties, and Mrs. DeLauro having had the luck to marry pollster to the Democratic stars Stan Greenberg.

Of the six richest U.S. Senators, only one is a Republican. John Kerry of Massachusetts, reported to be under consideration for departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s position, is number one, weighing in with a net worth of $238,812,296; Mr. Blumenthal is number six, with assets amounting to $94,870,116.

Great wealth is not necessarily a bar to politicians who, ideally, serve all the people all the time. Franklin Roosevelt, after all, did not sell apples for pennies on a street corner, and George Washington, father of the early Republic, a capitalist enterprise, is still the richest man to have held presidential office. But even Mrs. DiNardo, if one could catch her in an honest non-political mood, might be forced to admit that the life styles of both Mr. McKinney and Mr. Cafero are more representative of the middle class than that of Mr. Blumenthal, who lives in a million dollar estate in toney Greenwich, as does Mrs. McMahon.

We see the future through a glass darkly, but none of it looks promising. Like California, Connecticut is broke and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Both Mr. Malloy and Mr. Obama continue in their crony capitalist ways – transferring huge gobs of tax money not to the poor but to bribable large corporations – and demagoguery will only get you so far.

Mr. Foley is supposed to be out of touch with the usual Democratic constituency because he used the expression “little people” to condemn the seeming indifference of the party of the little people to the common man.

In an attempt to balance a chronically unbalanced budget,Mr. Foley told a TV news reporter, the governor was pulling the plug on needed services: “Now they're hurting the little people in the state: Alzheimer’s funding, the children's fund, the disabled, vets. They're stepping on the brake and hitting the accelerator at the same time.”

Here is an Obama voter, a 57-year-old African-American salesman in Calera, Ala., formerly a Republican, accounting for his switch: “Democrats stand for little people, regular people, common people like myself. My daddy was a Republican because Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, but the Republican Party changed and started being for people who had money.” And here is Democratic Party hero Andrew Cuomo, mayor of the Big Apple, hoisting his flag for the little people: "We're going to do all the hard things. We're going to bite the bullet. And we're going to do the courageous thing without punishing little people or exploiting the rich people."

Even within Democratic Party ranks, the expression “little people” is a synonym for “common people.” In rhetorical demonology, the expression’s antonym is – guess what? – “the rich.” One would think the head of the Democratic Party in Connecticut and Mr. Malloy’s chief flack catcher and demonologist-in chief would know all this; but then purposeful ignorance in pursuit of election victories is no vice for such as Ms. DiNardo and Mr. Occhiogrosso . 

The Campaign Finance Reform Flip… Flop… Flip…

Someone – no one is certain who did it – dismembered the non-partisan State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC), and the heart and liver of the thing ended up in the Secretary of State’s office.

The elections commission is supposed to prevent the kind of hanky panky that is the life and blood of machine party politics. The need for such a committee was felt after former Governor John Rowland, now a respected radio commentator and member of the fourth estate, was packed off to jail for having “deprived the state of honest services.”

Governor Dannel Malloy, the titular head of the dominant Democratic Party machine in Connecticut, has combined some agencies, supposedly as a cost saving measure, and that is how the body parts of the SEEC came to be parceled out to various agencies. This dismemberment, the leftist watchdog group Common Cause says, has considerably emasculated the hound of fair elections heaven.

The relevant watchdog agencies during the late mid-term elections nodded assent to a measure adopted by the Democratic controlled General Assembly that dumped millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of then gubernatorial candidate Dan Malloy – and just in time too, because the Democratic hopeful was in danger of being outspent by his Republican opponent, Tom Foley. So, when the high court ruled unconstitutional that portion of the nation’s complex campaign finance law that automatically would have would have supplied Mr. Malloy with tax generated funds to equalize money prospectively “spent” by Mr. Foley, Democrats in Connecticut’s General Assembly wrote a bill awarding to Mr. Malloy additional tax funds to redress the imbalance, thus depriving the state of the honest services of Mr. Foley, who lost to Mr. Malloy by the slenderest of margins. Money, as we had been told countless times by fair election folk, mattered.

It’s all very complicated. Legislation that attempts to square circles generally becomes so Byzantine that only seasoned politicians can understand it, the better to manipulate complex laws to their advantage. As laws and political processes become increasingly complicated, the violations of those laws, now subject to nuanced interpretation, tend to disappear in the maze of complexity. This is what has happened to national campaign finance regulation and its derivative permutations in the states. Confusingly complex laws, adrenaline to lawyers, are the enemy both of the good and the perfect.

In any case, the non-partisan superintending state agency commissioned to enforce campaign finance laws – portions of which some jurists have declared unconstitutional -- had been dismembered, a casualty of the pinched times in which we live. Under Mr. Malloy’s cost savings hatchet, the Freedom of Information Commission has met a similar fate.

Over on the left, an alarm was raised by Common Cause. The Malloy reforms of watchdog agencies, the left breathlessly warned, had seemingly removed the fox from the henhouse; but, in practice, Mr. Malloy’s economies, made necessary by shrinking resources, had put the hens directly in the mouths of the foxes. The Secretary of State office was to superintend the SEEC.

Late on Sunday, one of the wiser heads in the Democratic caucus may have asked: How can a partisan political office, the Secretary of State, be expected to rule in a non-partisan manner on questions involving campaign finance getting and spending? Called upon to decide a question of campaign funding that would either enrich or impoverish Democrats, how would the question have been decided by former Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, an intensely partisan politician now running for Sen. Joe Lieberman’s seat in the U.S. Congress? Can the fox really be trusted not to close his mouth on the hen that reform has fortuitously put in his teeth?

Reason struck like lighting late on Sunday and, at the last minute, Democrats in the legislature and Mr. Malloy decided to leave well enough alone and retain the independence of the SEEC. It will remain a self standing, independent agency.

As an amusing sidebar to this issue, it may be noted that when longtime reporter Mark Pazniokas set out toward the Capitol, lance in hand, determined to find out who wrote the silly pro-fox bill, he returned empty handed to CTMirror after having tilted with all the relevant windmills, his lance shattered: For some inexplicable reason, no one he interviewed in the Malloy administration or in the Democratic dominated legislature could tell him who wrote that portion of the bill that placed hen in the fox’s teeth.

Foley On Malloy’s Current Services Budget Chicanery

After Tom Foley lost the gubernatorial race to then former Mayor of Stamford Dan Malloy, he did not slink away into that good night in which many losing politicians find their ultimate repose.

Mr. Foley, a former ambassador and business owner, started a research organization that develops public policy proposals, and a recent op-ed piece Mr. Foley wrote for a Hartford paper represents part of the fruit of his post campaign labors.

Mr. Foley’s column vigorously attacks “current services budgets” as a means used by shiftily, non-transparent politicians to fool some of the people all of the time, in Abraham Lincoln’s piercing phrase.

The method of reckoning getting and spending in Connecticut’s current services budget is little more than a partially successful sleight of hand used by professional politicians to “pitch their causes and confuse their constituents to suit their purposes,” according to Mr. Foley.

Governor Malloy’s current services budget first implausibly assumes that tax policy and state services will not change in the new budget year and then uses this dubious assumption to project future revenues. In planning expenses for the new budget, Mr. Foley writes, current services budget writers factor in “anticipated wage and benefit increases for the same number of state workers and inflationary increases in the cost of things the government buys.”

Under the states current services budget in the fiscal year ending in June 2012, spending will increase 9.8 percent, $1.75 billion higher than spending for this year, a figure Mr. Foley characterizes as “ridiculous.”

Using the current services budget as the base year, Mr. Malloy claims in his budget proposal to have cut spending by $1.76 billion. His proposal shows personal income taxes increasing by $879.8 million, while total taxes increase by $1,840 million. The anticipated give backs Mr. Malloy hopes to recover from unions appear in his proposal as Labor Management Savings and are presented as an expense reduction.

Most people suppose that current year budgets serve as the baseline for future budget projections. But using the current year budget as a staring point, spending in the new fiscal year will increase rather than decrease by $263 million; personal income taxes will increase by $1,443 million; and total taxes will increase by$2,466 million.

And spending for the benefit of state workers will according to Mr. Foley remain “approximately even with this year, i.e., no givebacks… On this basis, the budget deficit is being funded entirely with new taxes and no spending reductions. That is a very different story from the shared sacrifice story being used to sell the budget.”

“Sell” is the operative word. To sell his proposed budget both to the general public and union workers from whom Mr. Malloy hopes to realize a “shared sacrifice,” it helps to peddle the notion that union givebacks – i.e. spending reductions -- are a fait accompli in the new budget; they are not. And anyone who believes that real time spending in the new budget has been slashed or that personal income taxes have been increased $879.8 million rather than by $1,443 million or that inflation will not drive up the costs of various state agencies in the new fiscal year has been successfully deluded by number crunches who rely on current services budget persiflage.

“Using the current services budget,” Mr. Foley asserts, “degrades the clarity and quality of debate on the budget. It enables bureaucrats to pad budgets and move the goal line in the hope of achieving ever higher funding. It enables politicians to obscure bad news and fabricate good news. It enables advocates of government spending to demagogue anyone who questions the ever-increasing funding for their causes. It confuses the concerned citizen who is trying to understand what is going on.”

Early in his campaign with Mr. Foley, Mr. Malloy announced that he would move the state towards a new budget accounting process, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), so as to assure transparency and forestall the budget gimmickry that had allowed prior governors and legislatures to present a false picture of budgets though the manipulation and abuse of sound accounting procedures. According to Office of Policy Management Secretary Ben Barnes, GAAP should be operational by July 1 2013 and begin in fiscal year 2014.

Current service budgeting does for political campaigning what dishonest budget accounting does for politicians who survive budget red ink by fooling some of the people all of the time. Democratic governor of New York Mario Cuomo has honestly addressed budget issues by using immediate prior budgets rather than current service budget chicanery in measuring the progress he has made in stemming the flow of red ink.

With a gentle poke in Mr. Malloy’s easily bruised ribs, Mr. Foley asserts that Mr. Malloy’s dark angel in New York got it right and suggests, “It isn't too late for our leaders in Hartford to follow Gov. Cuomo's lead and begin making things clearer for us as they debate next year's very important budget.”

Welcome To The One Party State

Governor-elect Dan Malloy, with an impressive assist from big cities such and Bridgeport and New Haven, won the election with enough votes to satisfy pretty nearly everyone, including outgoing Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, which means that Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley, who had pledged during the campaign to settle the state’s massive debt without an tax increase, lost.

The winners in the elections decide all important matters, including the two most important questions in politics: What is to be done, and who decides what is to be done? The answer to the second questions is heavily implicated, as the cops might say, in the first question, since deciders map the future.

Connecticut has now become a one party state, all the deciders being Democrats. For the foreseeable future, the Republican Party will be a loyal opposition that lacks the power to oppose, except on those rare occasions when it may make common cause with moderate legislative Democrats or a governor who has placed himself in opposition to a dominant Democratic legislative caucus. The real power vectors are to be found in the governor’s office and the state legislature, both commanded by Democrats, ever obedient to their traditional interests.

Occasionally, the media may play a role in shaping the direction of these vectors; but in a one party state, its countervailing influence is much diminished. And in a one party state in which the media leans to the left – welcome to Connecticut – the media, as a traditional left of center opposition useful in states that lean to the right, tends to disappear into a power structure that like-mindedly leans to the left, co-opted by a system of governance in which the enemy lies always to its right. Useful news, as opposed to cleverly concealed party propaganda, is for the most part opposition reporting. News is most alive, alert and visible when the media opposes the status quo. It disappears altogether when the media assents internally to a left or right regime. In a one party state in which both the government and the media are either left or right of center, news consumers tend towards cynicism and news producers lose their customers.

Government in a one party state tends to be conducted through movable caucuses that operate behind impenetrable veils either with the assistance or reprobation of a media that is entirely dependant on news shaped by unchallenged governors, administrators and legislators, all working in tandem to advance the interests of the governing sector.

To put it briefly, the power vectors in a one party state bend towards authoritarian rather than democratic means and solutions. In a one party state in which both the media and the governing power is reflexively leftist -- welcome to Connecticut – a feeble opposition from the right can easily be ignored. In a one party state in which an assenting media permits itself to be absorbed by the governing power, intelligent opposition, including the corrective opposition one expects in a vibrant democracy, tends to disappear.

One party states on the right tend to eliminate opposition on the left; one party states on the left tend to eliminate opposition on the right.

The most important attribute of a vibrant democracy is opposition to the status quo.

It is not difficult to paint a picture of the status quo in Connecticut. The General Assembly has been dominated for years by Democrats. Republican governors have done little more than tap the breaks on the state’s forward moving, increasingly progressive spending machine. The inability of two Republican governors and a faux Republican governor, Lowell Weicker, to reign in spending is one of the principal marks of a one party state. For two decades, there has been little effective opposition to spending from the state’s left of center media. And even now that a crippling recession is growling wolf-like at the door, important media outlets continue to insist that scarce money should be dumped into dubious projects such as an improved rail line that will more efficiently carry a hand full of employed commuters across a state teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. The state’s current bonding debt is a little less than $20 billion; its budget debt two years out is about $6 billion.

With the ascension of a Democratic governor, the possibility of an effective opposition to a continuing status quo that will render Connecticut uncompetitive with other states, once the weight of a recession is removed, becomes ever more remote.

That is why some small “d” democrats now are sifting through Mr. Malloy’s past and recent media interviews for indications that he is not captive to a political narrative incapable of restoring Connecticut’s competitive edge in a post recession period. Some cynics would be satisfied with an unambiguous signal that Mr. Malloy’s brake foot is in good order. So far, there is little reason for celebration.

The Unpleasantness At The Bridgeport Club

There has been some mild grumbling from Connecticut’s status quo media over the Bridgeport vote count.

The Day of New London, pointing to “the debacle in Bridgeport,” said it was an inauspicious beginning to the Malloy administration. Malloy’s “rush to Hartford to declare himself the next governor before any official result was inappropriate and smacked of a power grab.”

George Washington Plunkitt, the Tammany Hall boss, would have prospered in Connecticut’s modern day Democratic Party. If the old boy, honest to a fault, were writing editorials, he might say, “What’s the beef? The Democrats stole the election fair and square.”

The Day’s editorial answered its own objection: “Yet as votes continued to trickle in from New Haven and Bridgeport on Thursday, it became increasingly apparent that the Democrat would emerge from the process with a narrow lead over Republican opponent Tom Foley.”

What we have here is a political indelicacy, anxious Democrats perhaps too ready to rule, bad manners at worse. It will all disappear after Dan goes to Hartford. Tomorrow or the next day or the day after, we’ll all look back on this unfortunate incident and laugh. And there will be plenty of editorialists in the state, the majority of whom write for papers that endorsed Malloy, to make sure the laugh is on Bridgeport. In any case, the right people got in. And that’s what matters isn’t it?

According to Capitol Report, ex-Republican senator and Independent Governor Lowell Weicker has favored us with a comment:

“Weicker says Bysiewicz, Malloy wrong

'No matter what ensues, it's an affront to our Democratic principles and to the State of Connecticut that a Democratic Secretary of State declared an unofficial winner, only to have that unofficial winner enter the State Capitol announcing his Governorship and staff.

p.s. I did not vote for Tom Foley.'”

P.P.S. Go away.

So distraught was Weicker, who did not vote for Tom Foley (Translation: He voted for Malloy) that he rang up his friend Colin McEnroe, the humorist, and thundered in his ear, “I never thought I'd see the day when a candidate who hadn't been officially elected would show up at the State Capitol and claim he had the job!"

P.P.P.S. Please, go away.

Connecticut’s only state-wide newspaper, The Hartford Courant, groused, “… there sure has been a lot of uncharacteristic bumbling by officials in the Land of Steady Habits this election season.”

Yup. Sure enough.

Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz bumbled herself out of a gubernatorial slot because she wanted to be attorney general – which is to Connecticut politics what bling is to high fashion – then she bumbled herself out of that spot into the state supreme court, which ruled she didn’t have enough court experience to be attorney general. But before leaving office, Bysiewicz managed to perform one last service for her party by blinking while some cretin shorted Bridgeport of ballots. On orders from an obliging judge – the same overruled judge, it happens, who found Bysiewicz fit to be attorney general -- the polling doors in Bridgeport were left open in certain sections of the city so that Democratic Party operatives could quickly harvest just enough votes to swing the election to Malloy, who no doubt will be grateful as governor and give Bysiewicz a buss on the cheek and a refrigerated spot in state government until she is ready to decide what she wants to do with the rest of her political life.

Mark Pazniokas of CTMirror presented a straight faced account of the Bridgeport bumbles that put Malloy over the top.
 
Dennis House of WFSB has shown a video inside a Bridgeport polling place that captures the chaos, along with a spot featuring Mayor Jason McCoy of Vernon who was present at the polling place.. McCoy detailed several irregularities – multiple ballots given out to voters, bags of ballots left unattended -- every one of which should have triggered a recount and a thorough investigation by authorities unconnected with status quo politics in Connecticut.

In the meantime, some Republicans have compiled an unofficial count of all the commentators in the state of steady Democratic habits who voted in their editorials for Malloy and who, like Weicker, did not vote for Foley.

Foley: 3

Malloy: Everyone else.

These quibbles aside, the main thing is – the right guy stole the election fair and square. The only people who have a problem with that are not in office and not affiliated with members of the state's status quo media, most of whom would not be able to find Al Capone if he were hiding under their beds.

Après Rell

The estimate of the state of the state elections by Paul Bass, a writer for The New Haven Independent, is fairly accurate:

“Connecticut went true blue—bluer than ever. Malloy will have become the first Democrat to win the governor’s office since 1986. Democrat Richard Blumenthal captured an open U.S. Senate seat the party had seemed until only recently in danger of losing. And all five of the state’s U.S. House seats went to Democrats again—even though the 4th and 5th District appeared at times heading to turn red. Democrats also swept the under ticket constitutional offices.”

Departing Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz has called the gubernatorial election in favor of Dan Malloy. Two days after the election, the Associated Press, citing an 8,424 vote lead by Foley with all but 1.5 percent of precincts counted, withdrew its call of Malloy as the winner. Later in the day, the AP announced that it had missed figure in New Haven. Republicans may contest Bysiewicz’s finding in court. For someone who had been found by Connecticut’s Supreme Court to have lacked the requisite court experience to serve as attorney general, Bysiewicz certainly has been spending an inordinate amount of time on the wrong side of the bar.

Nationally, Republicans appear to have swept the boards: They won back the U.S. House of Representatives and a number of prime gubernatorial offices, but not in truer than blue Connecticut. No fewer than 19 legislative bodies switched from Democrat to Republican. Democrats have lost key chairmanships in the U.S. Congress; among the fallen is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. When Connecticut’s lock step Democratic representatives return home to the Beltway in the new session, they will find it remodeled. Republicans also picked up some seats in the U.S. Senate.

Some commentators, though not yet here in truer than blue Connecticut, are asserting that the national change – not the sort of “change” President Barack Obama approves – is a stunning repudiation of the president’s agenda. After a display of partisanship unmatched in recent times during which Democrats passed on a party line vote a massive health care bill and a smothering Dodd-Frank regulatory apparatus, it is expected that leading Democrats in the congress, their status and power much diminished, will begin in the new session to call for non-partisanship as a means to consolidate their questionable programs. Sen. Richard Blumenthal will be among them and Connecticut’s senior Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, repudiated by his own party, has given subtle hints that he may be willing to caucus with Republicans.

Change is in the air, but not here in truer than blue Connecticut, the status quo state.

A governor Malloy likely will have the same problem with the legislature as departing Gov. Jodi Rell, disappointing the state’s many left of center editorialists who supported Malloy on the assumption that birds of a feather would be able to negotiate together. Connecticut’s union owned representative, Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, and his confederate in the senate President Pro Tem Don Williams, both of whom were returned to office with large pluralities, will offer Malloy temporary spending cuts in return for permanent hikes in income tax rates on the state’s quarter-millionaires, anyone earning $250,00 per year. And if Malloy refuses to tag along, Donovan-Williams will soon let him know who the General Assembly belongs to.

But it will be worse than that. Those who have for years uninterruptedly voted in favor of the one party state Connecticut has now become will see a shift in taxing authority from municipalities, which control spending through referendums, to the state, where there are no referendums and no restraints on spending. This shift will be sold to the easily deluded among us as a “reduce the property tax” measure, while the coming tax rate increase on quarter-millionaires will offer a permanent bar to any small business considering moving to Connecticut or expanding instate.

The General Assembly’s inattention to permanent long term spending cuts will also serve as an order to quit the state for any business that can easily move its operations elsewhere. Pratt&Whitney -- despite senator-elect Richard Blumenthal’s strenuous efforts as attorney general to imprison the company instate through litigation -- is getting ready to bolt, and others will follow. If a Gov. Malloy attempts to pass through the legislature long term spending cuts, he will be met with a stiff resistance by Dovovan and Williams. Reproving editorials in Connecticut’s left of center media calling upon union owned leaders in the General Assembly to see reason and negotiate with Malloy will fall on deaf ears. It will take the Democratic dominated legislature about a year to make a Rell of Malloy, disappointing the many left of center editorialists who supported him on the assumption that a Democratic legislature would be more likely to negotiate with a governor of the same party. But at least they will get a rail line out of the new governor, enabling unemployed workers in Springfield to travel on a costly improved line to New Haven, an entrepreneurial dessert from which jobs and quarter-millionaires have fled to seek better prospects in states like North Carolina, where Pratt&Whitney’s competitor, Boeing, is in the process of breaking ground for a new aircraft manufacturing plant. Boeing is moving operations from Washington State where, it said, labor costs and unrest were unsettling.

At the end point, the curtain falls. It’s over.

Fini.

Courant Prepares To Endorse Malloy-Blumenthal

The editors of the Hartford Courant are preparing to endorse Dan Malloy as governor.

As governor, Malloy will sign a death penalty abolition bill earlier passed by the General Assembly, which has been dominated these many years by the Democratic Party. The bill abolishing the death penalty -- vetoed by Gov. Jodi Rell, who asserted that the death penalty was appropriate in some cases -- passed the legislature over heated Republican opposition during the assembly’s last session. Incumbent Democrats who signed off on the death penalty abolition bill likely do not expect their numbers in the legislature to be so depleted in the November elections as to make it impossible for a Democratic dominated assembly to pass the bill with Governor Malloy at the helm.

In an editorial printed in the Courant three weeks before Election Day, “Repeal The Death Penalty,” the paper asserts that the trials of Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky should not be an impediment to the abolition legislation the paper approves.

The “horrific” Cheshire murder trials likely will but should not “have a definitive impact on whether death by lethal injection continues to be a punishment option in this state,” according to the editorial. “We hope that it does not — that lawmakers and the next governor can summon the courage to substitute life in prison without parole as the ultimate penalty for capital crimes.”

The paper notes that a bill abolishing the death penalty would not affect capital felony prisoners convicted before the bill had been passed. An ex post facto rule of law, according to which laws cannot be retroactively applied to people whose actions were legal before laws prohibiting them were passed, still is observed broadly in the United States by most lawyers and jurists willing to bind themselves with adamantine Constitutional strictures. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal appears to have flouted that rule, binding on all lesser mortals, in the Pricilla Dickman case.

The editorial notes, “In last Tuesday's gubernatorial debate, Democrat Dan Malloy said he would, if elected, sign a bill that repeals the death penalty, but only going forward. That is, repeal would not apply to death sentences that stem from legal proceedings already underway.”

Abolition of the death penalty in Connecticut is being driven forward entirely by moral considerations. The Catholic Church and other religious institutions, as well as a secular media that considers execution for capital crimes to be morally repugnant, are in the vanguard of the abolition movement. No one seriously pretends that in the modern period criminals executed in Connecticut have been unjustly punished. The claim that capital felony punishment had been unjustly visited upon Michael Ross, one of two offenders executed in the state in the last 50 years, was always absurd.

In states like Texas, of course, things are different. Capital punishment opponents who often employ the canard that an accused might be unjustly convicted in Connecticut generally point to cases outside the state. No one, least of all the Courant, mentions that in Texas the governor is permitted to commute a capital felony sentence to life in prison if files a timely petition to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles that is signed by the governor.

The Courant has not yet asked Malloy whether as governor he would seek a like authority from a Democratic dominated legislature that had sent him a death penalty abolition bill he has promised to sign.

It is morally deracinated to seek abolition of the death penalty on moral grounds without also seeking some way to avert capital punishment in cases in which it has been imposed. It is impossible to conceive of a moral opposition to, say, slavery that would emancipate no slave currently held in bondage under a, emancipation declaration. After the legislature has found a way to abolish the death penalty, it will find a way to emancipate those convicted of capital punishment under a discarded law, perhaps by giving the new Democratic governor an commutation option like one that may be invoked by the governor of Texas.

In the meantime, Hayes, awaiting his just punishment under a law that will be abolished by a Democratic legislature allied with a Democratic governor, is preparing for his penalty phase trial.

Having been convicted of murdering a mother and two daughters in a fashion that even the most conscience stricken editors and columnists at the Courant consider heinous and depraved, Hayes’ lawyer, borrowing an leaf from Attorney General Blumenthal’s playbook, is preparing to argue to the jury that convicted his client that the capital felony charge should be overthrown because it would be too expensive to carry the cumbersome capital felony process through to its just end.

In May, 1990, arguing against Bill H.B. 5542, which when passed made death penalty convictions less burdensome for prosecutors by requiring courts to issue a death penalty when aggravating factors outweighed mitigating factors, Blumenthal advised:

“The death penalty not only lacks any deterrent affect. It is also been proven to be more expensive to impose than any kind of prison term. It is more expensive to house and continue the convictions, maintain the convictions of those who have been convicted and sentenced to death. That is a fact that has been proven again, and again, throughout the country. And it is the reason along with all the others, that most countries in Western Europe do not have the death penalty. Most New England States do not have it. We are one of the few in the region that does.

“So I urge my fellow members in this Circle, for all those reasons, to reject this amendment. Once again, we have a measure, a proposed statute with surface appeal, seductive on its face. But in reality it will not accomplish the purposes that its proponents say it will.”

The Courant also believes that it is too expensive in Connecticut to execute Hayes and Komisarjevsy: “As we have for decades, The Courant continues to oppose the death penalty because it has been unworkable and is expensive, unfair, risky and morally compromising.”

Especially, morally compromising: “Finally, the death penalty puts the state in a morally compromised position. As horrible as some crimes are and as evil as many of the perpetrators may be, the state should not be in their same business, the business of death.”

One supposes it would compromise the morals of the Courant to endorse as governor a candidate who approves the death penalty. That would be Republican candidate Tom Folly. The flip-flopable Blumenthal, by reversing himself on the death penalty -- as a senatorial candidate, he now approves it – has introduced a new wrinkle into Courant editorial processing: How can the paper justify itself morally by supporting both Malloy and Blumenthal?

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And the Courant is adept at finding ways out of moral swamps.

A Preview Of A Post-Primary Gubernatorial Campaign

Primaries are coming to a close in less than a week. It can’t happen soon enough.

Primaries are a distortion medium. People will have noticed that while general elections are matter, primaries are anti-matter. A Democratic politician blown to the left in a primary has only a few months before the general election to make his way to the right, and the same drama occurs among Republicans, though the motion is in the opposite direction. It is said on these occasions that Democrats, courting unions and progressives in the primary, find it necessary to address themselves in the general election to moderates within their party, as well as unaffiliated voters. Republicans, drifting right during primaries, face the same conundrum. Promises made during primaries are often abandoned during general elections. All this shape shifting distorts politics.

But what’s the alternative? That IS the problem. From the point of view of party people, the alternative – doing away with primaries – is unthinkable, and perhaps undoable. So, we are stuck with the beast. Not only are primaries a distortion medium; they are a distraction, and a dangerous one at that.

Primaries invite members of the same church, sitting practically in the same pew, to attack each other tooth and claw, with predictable results.

Take the gubernatorial race in Connecticut as a case in point. On the Democratic side, we see Ned Lamont and Dan Malloy making personal attacks upon each other, instead of more profitably addressing themselves to the issues. Malloy has said for years in his self promotion activities as mayor of Stamford that he helped to draw about 5,000 jobs into the city. Very likely, his intervention DID result in companies moving into Stamford during the late boom, bringing jobs with them. During the primary campaign, Lamont, hoping to dress himself in the garb of a Democrat whose principal interest is job growth, discovered a net loss of jobs in Stamford that might be attributed to Malloy.

He salivated.

Now, a net loss in jobs over a period of years does not necessarily mean that Malloy had not been instrumental in attracting business to Stamford; in fact, the net job loss may have been 5,000 jobs less had Malloy not intervened to attract businesses to his city. But never mind all that. In a primary in which the two contestants do not differ greatly on issues that matter, some means must be found to distinguish between the two – and so we get misleading attack ads, poisonous, meretriciously edited UTube clips, highly partisan bloggers with their brains on fire, trackers shadowing primary contestants hoping they might be able to record for some future attack ad a verbal slip or a hypocritical assertion, and all the rest of the political detritus thrown to the surface by a largely successful attack on the traditional two party system. Remember, primaries were DESIGNED to sap the party system. They have been successful. And, of course, campaign finance regulations are a godsend.

What to make of the claim that primaries are good?

They ARE good. Democratic primaries are good for Republicans, and Republican primaries are good for Democrats. No Republican cares much when Lamont bites off Malloy’s ear in a primary. The same is true on the Democratic side. Republican primary attacks on, say, Linda McMahon boost the prospects of her likely Democratic Party opponent in the general election.

Jonathan Kantrowitz, an intelligent progressive blogger who has taken a sudden interest in Rob Simmons’ on-again-off-again campaign, candidly admits that quarrels among Republican primary opponents make him dizzy with joy. Simmons is now cool on committing troops to Afghanistan, or so he claims in his latest ad, which has made him attractive to anti-war progressives. Even Blumenthal, these days, appears to be banging the war drums in sinc with President Barack Obama’s plans in Afghanistan, leaving progressive to clutch at the straws Simmons holds out to them.

There is no Democratic primary for the U.S. senate seat soon to be left vacant by a retiring Chris Dodd. So far, Republicans have had to rely on the self destructive tendencies of present Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic Party endorsed candidate. And in this, they have not been disappointed. Blumenthal has rusted up somewhat since he last engaged in a real political campaign, though he has, in the course of his 20 year run as attorney general, become adept at self-promotion. Owing to recent embarrassments – Blumenthal claimed falsely to have served in Vietnam, an almost certain poison pill for other ambitious American politicians – his handlers have kept him from the public arena, a strategy that is not likely to eradicate the rust spots.

In the general election, in any case, politics will return to normalcy, and there are some who hope against hope that we then may get on with important discussions of the issues. The danger is that all the personal attacks during the primaries will be internalized. Political parties have feelings too.

What should the issues be in the general gubernatorial campaign?

In less than two weeks, dazed Republicans and Democrats will go to the polls and choose their respective nominees for governor. The Democrat will be either Dan Malloy or Ned Lamont. The Republican will be either Tom Foley or Mike Fedele, currently the state’s Lieutenant Governor.

Foley’s strong suit is that he has no organic attachments to a Republican Party that has been unable, owing to its small numbers in the legislature, to reform public policy. The governor also has been far less effective in this regard than, say, Republican Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. Foley is a fresh face and a fresh mind, a businessman of some accomplishments. Fedele, also an accomplished businessman, has been tied to the apron strings of present Governor Jodi Rell, a popular chief executive who has been unable to shake the view of her, promoted by Democrats, as a caretaker governor.

The most severe problem facing an incoming Republican or Democratic governor is the state’s insolvency. Christie, confronting a comparable challenge – New Jersey has the heaviest debt load of any state -- waged a straight up conservative campaign in which he vowed to reduce his state’s debts though spending cuts. As governor, he has largely lived up to his pledges, incurring the undying enmity of the governing class and New Jersey’s influential media outlets.

In a hard fought campaign, Christie prevailed over multi-millionaire Jon Corzine.

Having inherited a $2.2 billion deficit and a projected deficit of $10.7 billion, relative to the state's $29.3 billion budget, he attacked and closed the $2,2 billion gap by accepting 375 of 378 suggested freezes and spending cuts; in eight weeks in office, he cut $13 billion. Property taxes in New Jersey, as in Connecticut, rise in direct proportion to increases in teacher’s salaries and benefits. Christie proposed a 2.5 cap on annual increases and then proceeded to ask teacher unions to make sacrifices, including unpaid furloughs and reductions on benefits. There was considerable push back on every front. Here is a post-campaign Governor Christie jousting with a reporter:



Watching Christie operate, many Republicans are asking themselves: Can we order up a likeminded governor in Connecticut? Do either of the prospective Republican candidates have the whatchacallits to follow Christie where courageous moderate Republican governors have never gone before?

The general impression among most voters is that many Democrats are holding on and waiting for changing circumstances, a national recovery from a deepening recession, to lift all the state’s boats. Other less sanguine Democrats pray that the windy effusions of one of the two Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls may change once the primary distortion medium is put behind him.

Mommy, Where Do Stories Come From?

To be just and honest, the noble ambition of credible journalism, it should be said up front that Tom Foley does not, or rather did not, beat his wife; neither is Ned Lamont a racist.

That is the undeclared imputation in two recent stories: one involving Foley, the Republican Party nominee for governor, and the other involving Lamont, now locked in a primary battle with former Mayor of Stamford Dan Malloy.

In the quarter decade old Foley story, the perp momentarily blocked his wife from leaving a driveway and disputed with her through a couple of stop signs, after which both were arrested. The matter was settled privately, charges were dropped, and the details of the case were not shared with the news media. A messy divorce is no walk through a rose garden, especially when the two former lovebirds quarrel over visitation procedures involving a young child.

The Foley story is, relatively speaking, old and hoary; the Lamont story is somewhat fresher.

Lamont, according to this one, was sued in 2002 by an African American fellow, an executive in the Delaware corporate offices of Lamont Digital Systems who felt, according to a Courant story, that he had been “’maliciously” fired after being denied stock, bonuses and commissions from sales activities.”

The African American fellow, asserting he was let go for racial reasons, figured the matter could have been righted if Lamont kindly surrendered to him a million dollars. The suit was settled privately in 2003; which is to say, the particulars of the dispute were not shared with the news media. The “secret” arrangements in both cases were secret because the principals involved declined to share their pain with the world, and the arrangements made satisfied all the parties involved, as well as the adjudicating authority.

But there is something about a secret that journalists do not love, particularly when it is held close to the chests of people who want to govern states.

Both stories, now in the public domain, have caused frayed relations between the three Republicans and two Democrats vying for governor because no one but the reporter who first released the information knows its provenance, and he is not likely to blow his sources to settle quarrels bubbling up in the Republican and Democratic gubernatorial camps. Reporters are generally circumspect and overly protective concerning their sources. The one piece of information flowing out of Watergate that remained a mystery for years after ex-President Nixon was tucked safely beneath the sod was – who was “Deepthroat?” Eventually, “Deepthroat” outted himself. Had he not done so, the world even now might be turning over in its mind the dread suspicion that it was Henry Kissinger who killed Cock Robin.

Both stories cited above are invitations to probe the general question: Does it matter where political dirt comes from?

To historians, who are sticklers for facts, the source of information always matters. And certainly the person whose ribs are poked with the knife would dearly like to have his curiosity appeased. But in journalism, a source is not likely to be revealed by the journalist unless the stream of information provided is false or malicious or directly intended to poison the political well – in which case, it matters a great deal where the information comes from. Presumably, the responsible journalist will have checked other reliable sources before he releases the politically damaging information. Even in dire circumstances, a journalist whose well has been poisoned by a bad source still may be reluctant to name names.

Why so?

Because he does not want to interrupt the flow of information coming his way from a source who would be unwilling to disgorge raw untested truth if it were certain that his anonymity could not be guaranteed by the journalist. As in a war, a great deal of raw political information comes from opposing political camps, but it does not follow that because candidate X has loosed the sluice gates on candidate Y, the information provided is, for that reason, unusable. Even the blackest lie carries within itself a grain of truth that, planted in terra firma, may, like the biblical mustard seed, though it is the smallest of seeds, grow into a tree large enough to provide in its spreading branches a home for all the chirping birds of the air.

The Confederacy of Dunces Revisited

While Lieutenant Governor Michael Fedele was savoring his court victory over Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Foley, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit was sawing off the limb he was sitting on.

The court struck down the “trigger provision” of Connecticut’s campaign finance system, a devise that awards extra public funds to candidates running against opponents not participating in the system who spend more than the system’s limits

Meanwhile, in a Connecticut court, Judge Julia Aurigemma has decided that Fedele’s view of a Connecticut statute which, in the not so humble opinion of this writer and an apprehensive U.S. Supreme Court, violates the Constitution is the correct one. In writing the Connecticut statute that violates the U.S. Constitution, the judge ruled, the legislature DID envision the possibility of two clever politicians bundling their contributions so that they may steer their skiff around a restriction limiting the amount of money they can accept as a legitimate campaign offering.

To put the matter briefly: All this litigatory nonsense is nonsense because McCain-Feingold and its myriad spawn is unconstitutional, and it is only a matter of time before an enlightened Supreme Court chucks the whole business as a impudent violation of the First Amendment.

But courts tend to disassemble unconstitutional structures brick by brink. “Time, there will be time,” says the poet:

“Time for visions and revision
That time will soon erase.”

The New York court said: No, you can’t deprive a candidate for office of his free speech rights. Money, most especially money used by private citizens to finance their own campaigns, as countless editorialists remind us daily, talks; therefore, it falls under the umbrella protections of the First Amendment. The court ruled that campaign contributions by lobbyists were acceptable; it also found that the so call “top off” provision of most campaign regulatory schemes was unconstitutional. Both rulings will reset the campaign contribution playing field in a way unacceptable to the levelers among us who hope to eliminate all advantages in pretty nearly every department of life.

To translate this into Connecticut terms, the New York Court ruled that Fedele cannot offset ALL the private money Foley pumps into his campaign with taxpayer generated “contributions.” The quotes imprisoning “contributions” are necessary because there ain’t no such animal as a tax “contribution.” All taxes are appropriated by force under threat of imprisonment, even that portion that some plucked citizens “agree” shall go to generic politicians.

So then, Fedele is constitutionally incapable of evening out the money spent by Foley through the Rube Goldberg mechanism the state legislature has created to “level” the campaign contribution playing field. The quotes imprisoning the word “level” are necessary here because – even if some constitutional devise could be found to “equalize” contributions between incumbents and challengers, the incumbent will never-the-less enjoy offsetting advantages, too numerous to mention here, that tilt the election playing field – life is so unfair – so as to accomplish his nefarious purposes.

At this point, no one can say for certain where all this judicial and legislative nonsense will end. It probably would have been much saner, and more effective, to scrap McCain-Feingold and steer all campaign contributions anonymously through party mechanisms. The contributions would in this way arrive at the door of an incumbent or a challenger masked, so that neither the incumbent nor the challenger could identify its source as originating from a PAC or a Robber Barron or a union or a patriot intent on steering his money to someone who genuflects before the Constitution.

But, you say, the routing method would assure that no challenger outside the two major parties would receive funds. Not true. The campaigner independent of the major political parties would simply have to start a party – this would be made effortless in the scheme here proposed -- and the tap would be open to him. But, you say, it’s hard to start a party.

But, I say, life is hard. At this point in our leap into a politically bleak future, my guess would be that independents, more numerous in Connecticut than either party, would be willing to donate to third parties – provided the distribution mechanism was not controlled by the usual political culprits disguised as politically disinterested citizens.

How to disguise the contributions?

Americans are an unusually inventive species: Where there’s a will, there will be a way.