The Harp Brigade

No seasoned political watcher in New Haven will be much surprised by the gaggle of 14 karat Democrats who showed up at St. Luke’s Parish Hall to lend their support to state Senator Toni Harp in her bid to replace John DeStefano as the Elm City’s mayor.

Everyone who is anyone in Democratic Party politics showed up to row the Harp boat successfully ashore, although former Mayor of New Haven John DeStefano, notably absent, did not on this occasion join the chorus of prominent Democrats pledging their support to Mrs. Harp.

A New Haven paper reported: “Harp, a Democrat, employed a VIP lineup of top politicians in her party to pump up a room of over 120 supporters at St. Luke’s Parish Hall at 111 Whalley Ave. Among those who appeared on her behalf: U.S. Sens. Dick Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, state Sens. Martin Looney and Don Williams, and state Reps. Pat Dillon, Gary Holder-Winfield, and Roland Lemar.”

Encomiums sweetened the air. The ubiquitous Governor Dannel Malloy was on hand. Noting the array of fellow Democrats prepared to support Mrs. Harp, Mr. Malloy said the presence of so many twinkling stars “tells you how important in our minds New Haven is.” City votes were crucial in launching Mr. Malloy into the governor’s office, and for many years Democrats have “owned” most of the larger cities in Connecticut. It is commonly acknowledged that whoever wins a Democratic primary in New Haven will carry the election.

U.S. Senator Chis Murphy -- on his way to Europe in an attempt to salvage the sagging reputation of the star spangled administration of President Barrack Obama following disclosures that American spooks had tapped the cell phone of Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel – called Mrs. Harp a champion of the disenfranchised at the state Capitol and encouraged the crowd to “work your butts off” on election day for the wife of the recently departed Wendell Harp.

According to several news reports, the late Mr. Harp was one of the city’s most egregious tax scofflaws.

Upon his demise, Mr. Harp’s business, Renaissance Management, was taken over by Mrs. Harp’s son, who now faces a $1.1 million sales tax liability resulting from a long standing dispute with the state Department of Revenue Services settled in the department’s favor through a 2003 ruling by the state Supreme Court. Mr. Harp’s settlement payments were laconic and sporadic. Accrued interest over the years has “pushed Renaissance Management to the number one slot on a list of 100 delinquent businesses,” according to one news account.

Mr. Blumenthal has come a long way baby since as a crusading Attorney General the quick to sue Blumenthal hounded in-state businesses that for one reason or another had strayed from the path of righteousness.  As a U.S. Senator Mr. Blumenthal now not only winks at tax scofflaws in his own state; he unblushingly campaigns for them on their behalf.

But Mr. Blumenthal is not alone. When Mrs. Harp was elected the first woman mayor of New Haven – “New Haven needs a woman Mayor,” said Mr. Malloy on the primary campaign stump -- the lights of the Democratic Party in Connecticut were greatly responsible for hoisting her petard. When all the votes had been counted in New Haven’s 30 wards, Mrs. Harp had overcome a challenge by Justin Elicker by a fairly narrow margin, considering the political circumstances: Having lost to Mrs. Harp in a Democratic primary, Mr. Elicker mounted a challenge as a petitioning candidate. Petitioning candidates running against political party insiders generally do not do as well.

The Republican Party in Connecticut, which has little or no presence in the state’s larger cities, would have been delighted with Mr. Elicker’s figures: The final tally was 11,353 votes for Mrs. Harp and 9,416 votes for Mr. Elicker -- 54.66 percent to 45.34 percent, not a bad showing for a politician campaigning outside the political party box.

But no cigar.

The Devil In Blumenthal’s Details

The expression “the devil is in the details,” first appearing in print in 1975, is a variation of an earlier expression, “The good God is in the detail,”sometimes attributed to Gustave Flaubert. Both expressions point to the importance of detail, what we moderns call verifiable data or facts.

Politicians, to no one’s surprise, sometimes traffic in facts, sometimes not.

In a recent copyrighted story in the Hartford Courant, U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal is shown expressing his disdain for the devilish details surrounding the Sandy Hook massacre: “Blumenthal dismissed the statistics and legal intricacies and focused on Begg and Heslin sitting at the witness table. He said, ‘Some or all of those 20 beautiful children and six great educators would be alive today if assault weapons had been banned along with high capacity magazines.’"

Mr. Blumenthal was speaking to reporters on the record following testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee of one of the parents of the children, 20 in number, who were slain in Sandy Hook Elementary School.

As expected, the testimony was heart rending. Only a heart of stone could fail to be moved by the personal testimony of Neil Heslin, whose 6-year-old-son, Jesse Lewis, was murdered in the savage attack.

Also present during the testimony was the sister of Victoria Soto, one of the heroic figures in the Sandy Hook mass murderer.

Ms. Soto was the First Grade teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School who managed to save children’s lives by hiding several of them in a closet. When Adam Lanza entered her classroom after having killed fifteen students and two teachers, she told him, with great presence of mind, that the children were in the auditorium. Some students ran from their hiding place and Mr. Lanza shot them, also shooting Ms. Soto who, in an attempt to save their lives, threw herself in death’s path.

“We don’t want our sister to die for no reason,”Jillian Soto told the host of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Courage runs deep in the Soto family.

“We lost our sister, tragically,” said Jillian, “and we are now honoring her by fighting for her name and for change–in her name, and all the other victims of Sandy Hook Elementary School and all the other school shootings. We don’t just want her to be a statistic. We want her to be known for who she is and the amazing teacher that she was -- the amazing sister she was -- and ask for something, demand that something be done so that nobody else has to go through this.”

“So that nobody else has to go through this…” These words should not be taken as a pointless rhetorical incantation. We should not allow the devil to ease a pathway for us around the details; for, if we do, we cannot arrive at a legislative destination that will assure family members of the innocent children slaughtered in Sandy Hook that other parents will not, like them, weep tears of blood when their innocent children are accosted by gunmen in what used to be considered here in Connecticut a sanctuary of peace and joy -- and this means that legislators must master the details, or the faults in their legislation will ride them like devils.

The architect of the federal bill preferred by Mr. Blumenthal is U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. The Feinstein bill bans future sales of assault weapons, already illegal under Connecticut law, while permitting current owners to retain their weapons and, as such, would not have prevented Adam Lanza from acquiring the weapon he used to slaughter children in Sandy Hook. A confiscation of such weapons legally owned by their purchasers might have prevented Mr. Lanza’s use of the AR15, a semi-automatic long rifle, but then Mr. Lanza arrived at the school armed with two equally lethal handguns, the weapon of choice in urban areas where the preponderance of murders occur. Only a little less than three percent of homicides in 2011 were committed with long rifles. The Feinstein bill also limits easily replaceable magazines to ten bullets. According to a story the details of which have not been verified by the official criminal report, not due until the summer, Mr. Lanza replaced his thirty round magazines after having fired 15 rounds. The shotgun he left in the car and the two hand guns he carried with him into the school would have been as devastating.

When Mr. Blumenthal said, focusing dramatically on Mr. Heslin and dismissing as “unimportant”statistics and legal intricacies, “Some or all of those 20 beautiful children and six great educators would be alive today if assault weapons had been banned along with high capacity magazines," he was telling what Mark Twain used to call a stretcher, not that he will ever be reproved for it by the right people. Mr. Blumenthal, formerly an attorney general, did, after all, include the slither word “some” in his stretcher.

Back home, Democratic leaders in the General Assembly were spooking their brother legislators. The president pro tem of the Senate Don Williams and Majority Leader Martin Looney wrote a letter to their colleagues demanding that a legislative committee complete its work on time; and the bill presented to the General Assembly, they said, would be“emergency certified.”

An "emergency certified bill" is one that short circuits the legislative process because an “emergency”requiring short circuiting is at hand. The short circuiting, fortunately for legislators who do not wish to leave unsightly fingerprints on the resulting bill, renders hearings on proposed bills unnecessary. There is no emergency, only a legislative stampede made in Washington. Convenient emergencies of this kind are the enemy of the good and a shameless dereliction of legislative responsibility. If legislators don't want to create effective bills, they should find another means of employment.

The one notable Democratic legislator who appears to be committed to a tried and sure legislative process designed to produce efficacious legislation is Democratic Speaker of the House Brendan Sharkey. Mr.Sharkey is reluctant to sign on to emergency legislation the provisions of which have not been approved by the General Assembly appointed bipartisan task force. Apparently, Mr. Sharkey prefers a more comprehensive bill written by Connecticut legislators for citizens of Connecticut. Hearings on proposed legislation allow legislators to shape bills with a view to particular circumstances. The notion that the General Assembly should be stampeded in its deliberations simply to meet a schedule imposed from Washington DC is more than preposterous; it is dangerous because it subverts a republican constitutional order and will likely produce a product useful only to politicians concerned with campaign sound bites.

Where Is The Technological Solution To Unauthorized Gun Use?

One of the reasons Americans are by nature optimistic is that they seem to believe that there is no problem on earth to which there is not at least one technological solution.

State politicians are now actively engaged in addressing the mass murder in Sandy Hook where, more than a month ago, a gunman fired upon school children, killing 20 children and 6 staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and some critics have attacked a few of the legislative solutions so far offered because they regard them as non-solutions.

Two state legislators, Representative Bob Godfrey and Senator Beth Bye, have written a bill that imposes a 50 percent tax on the total sale of ammunition, a non-solution that struck a chord in the heart of Democratic Majority Leader Martin Looney, who observed, “A gun without ammunition is only a club. We really need to restrict access to ammunition.” But of course; and a car without gas is a stationary art piece. Wishing that every rifle in Connecticut were a club is a form of magic thinking that will do little to reduce gun crimes in the real world.

Mr. Looney, who has been leading gun control efforts in the Democratic dominated State Senate, recently has announced that a bill addressing the slaughter in Sandy Hook will bypass the usual public hearing process and be sent to the governor for his signature though an emergency certification process, a strategy that will obviate legislative oversight and leave no unsightly fingerprints on a final bill produced in General Assembly backrooms by legislative leaders. Too many fingerprints on legislation might imperil re-election efforts by removing vague assertions of approval. The Looney gambit can only succeed by enlisting the support of a governor armed with veto power.

It is one thing to know or think you know, and it is quite a different thing to know that you know. We should be modest about what we know concerning the events at Sandy Hook. So far, criminal investigators have released no definitive findings on the mass murder. After all the data has been presented, certified and sifted, all of us can begin seriously to ponder the problem and offer effective solutions. Until that time arrives, we are building our Looney castles on sand.

In proposing solutions that would in the view of Governor Dannel Malloy and others prevent future Sandy Hooks, we should first agree that the chief problem is the unauthorized use of guns; or, to put it in police terms, guns falling into the hands of criminals.

Pending a final report on Sandy Hook, there is some reason to believe that the shooter illicitly acquired the weapons he used at Sandy Hook Elementary School. If Adam Lanza’s mother had permitted her son’s use of her weapons to slaughter children at an elementary school, Mr. Lanza need not have murdered her.

We think we know that Mr. Lanza had at his disposal, two semi-automatic pistols, a shotgun, which he may have left in the car he took from his mother, and a Bushmaster long gun, a semi-automatic capable of firing 30 rounds from a dischargeable magazine. According to one news report not yet verified by crime investigators, Mr. Lanza changed his magazines after firing 15 rounds.

Could there be a technological solution to gun crime? Is it possible to engineer solution to the unauthorized possession of weapons?

If the weapons Mr. Lanza acquired, presumably without the approval of his mother, had been inoperable, children’s lives might have been saved. To put it in terms used by Mr. Looney: If the disarmed weapons used by Mr. Lanza were clubs, the slaughter might have been averted.

Present law requires weapons to be securely locked up and unavailable to unauthorized users. Suppose – just to suppose – that the gun safeties on most weapons were to be replaced by a lock operated by a fingerprint or a swipe card, the weapon rendered inoperable after purchase until activated by its owner each time it is used. That kind of technological solution to the problem of the unauthorized use of stolen weapons or illicitly acquired weapons– or some more practical method that would prevent any but an authorized user from discharging the weapon -- would be far more helpful in averting Sandy Hook mass murders than a tax on bullets, supposed by some to be a craven attempt to raise needed revenue that would not affect the illicit purchase of weapons or bullets.

Creating such a technological solution – not necessarily those suggested above-- that would render a firearm inoperable to anyone but an authorized purchaser ought to be a snap for a country that can put a rover on Mars. Where there is a will, there is a way; and where there is a demonstrable need, there is money to be made by some energetic and creative weapons manufacturer.

We already know that not every sociological or economic problem here in the land of Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Samuel Morse, Orville and Wilber Wright and Samuel Colt yields to legislation.

Sometimes it takes an engineer to carve a path out of the wilderness to a safe and secure future.

Cowards All

Connecticut’s House of Representatives voted on April 11 to abolish the death penalty prospectively, which is another way of saying that the General Assembly will not apply its morals and its legal prescriptions to the Connecticut 11, inmates presently awaiting punishment on Death Row.

The abolition bill having passed both houses of the General Assembly, will be made operative upon Governor Dannel Malloy’s signature.

In order to make abolition palatable for wavering politicians, the leaders of the Senate responsible for passing the bill, President Pro-tem Don Williams and Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, inserted into the legislation a provision that will retain Death Row for prisoners who in the future commit heinous crimes. Death has been abolished, but Death Row lives on. In time, prisoners who have been spared death, courtesy of the moral epigones in the General Assembly, will mingle in the same general space with others sentenced to death whose crimes will be no less heinous.

The prospective abolition bill is the single most cowardly piece of legislation passed in the last half century, and it gives the lie to every argument made in the General Assembly in favor of abolition.

Here is House Majority Leader J. Brendan Sharkey fulminating, just prior to passage, that the death penalty has not eradicated evil:

"Despite having the death penalty in our society here in Connecticut for several hundred years ... it certainly hasn't eradicated evil from our society. If we as human beings created laws that reciprocate the evil that's perpetrated on society, are they really protecting us? ... Our laws more project our better selves."

But in the case of the 11 inmates awaiting execution, the bill approved by Mr. Sharkey visits upon them a reciprocal evil. And we would be no less safe, the pro-repeal forces in the General Assembly have repeatedly assured us, if the sentences of the Connecticut 11 had been commuted to life in prison retrospectively. Mr. Sharkey has yet to share with us the moral precept that justifies a penalty of death for 11 Death Row inmates who are to be executed AFTER the law authorizing execution has been abolished.

Following abolition, national president of the NAACP Benjamin Jealous said, “This vote tonight ... allows Connecticut to break with a centuries-old tradition of executing people and rejoin the rest of the Western world, which has long since cut bait with the death penalty. It also moves our nation forward." But as long as the Connecticut 11are subject to the death penalty, it cannot be said that Connecticut has “moved forward.”

Meeting in Paris in February 2007, the forward looking 3rdWorld Congress Against The Death Penalty pointedly noted that abolition was not nearly enough to satisfy the demands of justice: “We recognize that the process of abolition must be accompanied by a better consideration of the needs of victims and by an in-depth reflection on penal policy and prison systems, in the framework of an equitable and restorative justice… We demand with one voice the end throughout the world of justice that kills. No authority has the right to strike out a person’s life. We recall that the death penalty is a cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, that it is contrary to human rights, that it has no utility in the fight against crime, and that it always represents a failure of justice.”

A death penalty abolition that leaves 11 Death Row inmates subject to execution by no means satisfies the prescriptions of the Paris conference.

Every argument made in the General Assembly in support of prospective death penalty abolition, sufficient or not, applies as well to retrospective abolition. And every argument made by partisan Democrats in Connecticut in support of abolition would apply equally to the FederalDeath Penalty Abolition Act of 2011, a bill co-sponsored by 15 Democratic Representatives. Democratic contenders for congress – most especially Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, who organized support for Connecticut’s death penalty abolition bill -- should be asked in the course of their debates whether they will support the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act.

First Abolition, Then Commutation

The death penalty in Connecticut, after several previous attempts, was abolished today by the Senate in a 20-16 vote. The House is certain to pass the abolition bill, and Governor Dannel Malloy has pledged to sign it into law. Senator Edith Prague, who voted in favor of abolition before she voted against it, this time voted to abolish the death penalty prospectively. A prospective rather than a retrospective abolition of the death penalty, it is said by proponents of abolition, will leave untouched the death sentences of eleven inmates awaiting execution on death row,.

After an emotional meeting with Dr. William Petit, the sole survivor of a home invasion Cheshire in which two now convicted murderers took the lives of his wife and two daughters, Mrs. Prague famously said of one of the two murderers convicted and sentenced to death, “They should bypass the trial and take that second animal and hang him by his penis from a tree out in the middle of Main Street.”

But emotional responses, little more than convenient masks politicians sometimes put on to curry favor with voters, are evanescent. When the most recent bill abolishing the death penalty was presented to the general assembly, Mrs. Prague changed both her emotions and her vote.

The abolition of the death penalty raises the question of commutation for those awaiting punishment on death row. Unlike other states, commutations in Connecticut are parceled out by the legislature, not the governor. But it is always possible that an appellate court may strike down that provision in the abolition bill that preserves the death penalty for the 11 convicted murderers on Connecticut’s death row.

The possibility of commutation for the "Connecticut 11" was raised by Senator John McKinney prior to the vote in the General Assembly. Senator Prague allowed that discretion was decisive in judicial findings; for this reason, she said, it was essential that the abolition legislation must “make it very loud and very clear that this repeal cannot apply to anyone who is on death row.”

Mr. McKinney responded that even in the face of unambiguous language in the bill stipulating the abolition law is not intended to apply to inmates already sentenced to death, the courts would view the intent of congress clause as immaterial: “That’s a decision that will be decided in the courts. No one disputes that there will be a legal challenge brought by the public defender’s office and the weight of the legal experts is to say that a prospective death penalty won’t pass constitutional muster.”

The air in the small room, crowded with reporters during a media availability just prior to the Senate vote, was liberally sprinkled with the usual Democratic caucus propaganda. Reporters were addressed by the three vanguards of death penalty repeal – President of the Senate Don Williams, Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney, Senator Eric Coleman, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, all three of them lawyers, and Correction Commissioner Leo Arnone. The irrepressible Mr. Coleman could not forbear mentioning that abolition was for him a matter of conscience, “even should it [the death penalty] be repealed prospectively,” leaving eleven prisoners facing death in the absence of a law mandating execution. The three were peppered with questions concerning the likelihood that appellate courts might void that portion of the bill that seeks to prevent abolition for the inmates facing execution.

Dr. Samuel Johnson, were he a member of the General Assembly, easily could explain why the abolition bill cherished by Democratic caucus leaders should have been applied retroactively.

Nulla poena sine lege– “Where there is no law, there is no transgression” – is a part of the Natural Law that informs all laws. When Mr. Johnson was reporting on debates in the House of Commons, he offered this gloss on the doctrine: “That where there is no law there is no transgression, is a maxim not only established by universal consent, but in itself evident and undeniable; and it is, Sir, surely no less certain that where there is no transgression, there can be no punishment.”

Any sound legal defense of prospective capital punishment collapsed upon repeal of the death penalty sanction: Where there is no law, there can be no transgression; where there is no transgression, there can be no punishment. That is the rule of law not simply in Connecticut; it is a part of the natural law written with a finger of fire in the hearts of just men, not excepting judges, though some are prone to political pressure adeptly applied by ambitious politicians.

Death penalty opponents have been in the habit of referring falsely to a just death penalty as “judicial murder.” Having voided the death penalty, what possible moral reason can be advanced to justify what should rightly be regarded as murder, plain and simple? No possible justification can be advanced that does not do violence both to the law and the moral sense of just men and women. The death penalty abolition bill as proposed – with its prospective feature – is political Babbitry of the worst kind, a fainthearted retreat from legislative responsibility. The Democratic General Assembly, having messed its pants with this ill proposed bill, will now expect the courts to wash its diapers and apply through judicial edict the retroactive feature it was too politically cowardly to attach to it.

Malloy Budget Passes Senate

Alleging that the budget that passed through the Connecticut state senate would lead to job creation, the ultimate goal of Democrats in the General Assembly, Gov. Dannel Malloy, seemingly pleased that his budget sailed through the senate without serious revision, thanked Senate President Don Williams, Majority Leader Marty Looney, Appropriations Chairman Toni Harp and Finance Chairman Eileen Daily in particular. “They took the budget I proposed, they made it better, and they passed it,” said Mr. Malloy in the following press release:

“The Senators who voted for this budget early this morning should be commended for making the tough decisions necessary to begin the process of getting Connecticut’s fiscal house in order. That was a tough vote to make, but it was the right vote to make. It was a vote for an honest budget, one that’s balanced with no gimmicks, and one that will stabilize the state’s finances and lead to our ultimate goal: job creation. I’d like to thank Senate President Don Williams, Majority Leader Marty Looney, Appropriations Chairman Toni Harp and Finance Chairman Eileen Daily in particular. They took the budget I proposed, they made it better, and they passed it.”

The budget, which includes the largest tax increase in state history, passed the senate by a narrow margin of 19 to 17, three Democrats -- senators Joan Hartley of Waterbury, Gayle Slossberg of Milford, and Edward Meyer of Guilford -- voting against the measure. The marathon debate on the budget ended at 3:00 in the morning. The $40.2 billion two year budget increases spending by 2.14 percent in the first year and 2.32 percent in the second year.

Republicans, who had no hand in shaping the budget hammered out by Democrats behind closed doors, said the tax increases were too high and would produce a surplus of $1 billion in the span of two years. Democrats answered that the surplus is needed to pay off debt and replenish the “rainy day fund" depleted by former Governor Jodi Rell and the Democrats, who have habitually voted for a tax increases they knew were too high. Ever since the income tax had been written into law, Connecticut’s Democratic dominated legislature and its three previous governors have used frequent billion dollar surpluses to boost an ever increasing level of spending.

One need only imagine a drunken sailor in a bar staring with steely determination at a pretty woman to have perfect picture of the effect surpluses generally have on high spenders in and outside the state legislature.

Mr. Malloy was roundly denounced by Republican leaders for having cut them out of the budget decision making process.

Noting that Mr. Malloy had dangled before them a promise of bi-partisan cooperation on the budget, Republican leader Larry Cafero concluded that the governor was “unwilling to compromise, unwilling to listen, headstrong, and not willing to be flexible. It's his way or the highway.”

Sen. Steward McKinney asked pointedly during debate on the budget, “How can you be open for business when you have a 100 percent increase on the corporate surcharge? You cannot preach and talk and scream and say we're open for business and increase the corporate surcharge. At some point, the talk is hollow and meaningless.''

Mr. Malloy’s aversion to dealing with minority Republicans in the General Assembly is reminiscent of the strategy employed by President Barack Obama in pushing through a veto proof congress contested measures that much of the country disapproved of. In a subsequent election, many of the congresspersons who hanged together with Mr. Obama later were hanged separately in the mid-term elections.

Prior to the passage of his budget in the senate, Mr. Malloy, seeking to distinguish himself from his Republican contemporary in New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie, presented his tax increases as fair and equitable. Amid measures designed to attack spending, Mr. Malloy had deployed “a new way.” Mr. Christie and, surprisingly, Democratic Governor of New York Mario Cuomo both had submitted budgets that contained no tax increases. Mr. Malloy’s budget has a massive doughnut hole in it. Although the Democratic dominated senate passed Mr. Malloy’s plan, the budget was not in balance at passage because state unions, called upon by Mr. Malloy to give back $2 billion in order to balance the budget, are still negotiating the give backs with the governor’s office.

Over in Massachusetts, once derided by nutmeggers as Taxachussetts and now called Wisconsin East, the Democratic denominated House overwhelmingly pushed through a measure that considerably reduces the political heft of unions by eliminating collective bargaining.

“It’s pretty stunning,” the president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO said. “These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected.”

The most accurate way to describe Mr. Malloy’s budget is – not stunning: It raises taxes, does not touch the wellsprings of public debt, provides the usual billion dollar surplus and is has not produced fevered objections from the free spending left, with the possible exception of uber-liberal Jonathan Pelto.