Malloy’s Non-Campaign, The Dog Lobby And The Coming Auto-De-Fé

At a press conference on Access Health CT (Obamacare), Governor Dannel Malloy was asked for the hundredth time whether he intends to run for governor.

Weary of having to handle the question gingerly, Mr. Malloy told the gaggle of reporters assembled for the event something like this:  If I answer “Yes” to your question, the campaign will begin at that moment. And once a campaign begins in earnest, I will lose control of the sub campaign, which is the event you are attending right now. On this occasion, I can say what I like without having to wend my way through a briar patch of questions you and the Republicans might consider more important than the possibility of a soda tax -- which, by the way, I do not favor.

“On a proposed 2 percent tax on sugary beverages, put forward by New Haven Mayor Toni Harp,” the Register reported, “Malloy said: ‘I wouldn’t hold my breath. I am not proposing a sugar tax, I can assure you of that... At some point, there is a degree of personal choice to be made.’”

In the post-Obamacare epoch now upon us, people will be less able to make their own decisions concerning the kinds of coverage they need, those crucial decisions already having been made by  Obamacare technicians in Washington D.C. Perfectly healthy young people, quite able to make their own personal choices,  who used to be able to defer purchasing health insurance they did not need, will no longer be able to do so, thanks to a Supreme Court decision packed with linguistic fudge that permits the chief executive of the United States to impose a tax -- but not a fee -- on non-compliant college students whose futures are even now mortgaged to unreasonably high student loans.

The court’s green light opened a new era in governing: For the first time in U.S. history, a government will be able to prescind product choices and force people, on pain of punishing fees – oops, sorry there; the court says they are taxes, not fees – to purchase a product shaped in large part by Beltway technicians. Issues such as these tend to flop into the background in the absence of a political campaign that Mr. Malloy wishes to put off as long as possible.

There is no need to guess why Mr. Malloy wishes to put off his campaign announcement; he told the Register why at his faux campaign event:

“’I want to get as late into the year without having made a decision and being able to avoid talking about politics,’ Malloy said of daily questions he gets on the gubernatorial race where as many as five Republicans could be heading toward a primary fight.

“’Those folks (Republican opponents), they have a job to do. They got to beat each other up. At some point, they are going to do that. I have a job to do, I got to be governor and I want to do that job as long as I can,’ Malloy said.

“Tongue in cheek, he added: ‘If I suddenly was to decide today about being a candidate, I’m fearful you wouldn’t show up at these things.’” 

At some point the press availability drifted towards the plastic bag crisis:

“Malloy said they will look at a bill state Sen. Edward Meyer, D-Guilford, proposed on banning plastic bags. The governor said part of the calculation is understanding what is burnable as far as plants that convert trash to energy.”

The press/campaign availability over, everyone went about his business. The gaggle of reporters was given to understand that the governor, who will run for re-election (wink, wink), did not wish to be bothered by questions that might well be put to him had he announced he was running for governor. Reporters likely returned to their desks to find on their computer terminals the next announcement of Mr. Malloy’s next campaign event.

It really is a pity no paper in Connecticut could hire Mort Sahl, now pushing 90, as a news editor.

Editor Sahl to Reporter:  “Now, listen here, at Mr. Malloy’s next non-campaign campaign event, I want you to hone in on a question. The proposal to eliminate plastic bags will be strenuously resisted by dog owners in Connecticut; that is – responsible dog owners who pick up after their dogs with plastic bags they bring home from grocery shopping. Find out how many dog owners there are in Connecticut. Ask them whether they plan to use paper grocery bags for the same purpose. They can’t, you know. Get usable quotes. Don’t shake your head at me, boy. Have you ever tried to pick up dog poop with a paper grocery bag?  I can see your life has not been a raw one. I can tell from your silken hands. Now then, I want to ask the governor: If plastic grocery bags are rendered illegal by the General Assembly, will the governor ask Brendan Sharkey or Don Williams to be on call when one of their constituents’ dogs feels the pull of nature? What we need in this state is an auto-de-fé for idiot law makers. Get going now, and don’t let’em take a detour around the question.”

Malloy, Connecticut’s Crony Capitalist-In-Chief

When Governor Dannel Malloy first came into office, some commentators who had paid close attention to his campaign assumed he was ready to vigorously attack spending.

He had often enough during his campaign batted around the catch phrase “fair share.” It was generally understood that everyone in Connecticut would, under the Malloy dispensation, be expected to contribute his “fair share” in taxes and give-backs, and most people expected, after the new governor had imposed on taxpayers the largest tax increase in state history, that the consumption side of government would see proportional reductions in spending.

The tax increase was immediate and, some would argue, devastating to an economy in the grip of a prolonged recession: See President Jack Kennedy’s speech to the Economic Club of New York. Mr. Malloy’s prospective savings, as it turned out, would be distant and amorphous.

Who could have guessed, as the Malloy campaign rolled out, that the governor would soon become Connecticut’s Crony Capitalist-in-chief?

Mr. Malloy has since dumped millions of taxpayer dollars on the state’s economic roulette wheel; he calls this sort of thing “investing in the future.”

Any real investor in Connecticut – and there are some still huddled together in what used to be called Connecticut’s “Gold Coast,” many of whom have made successful investments and consequently have contributed their “fair share” to Connecticut’s economy – could have told Mr. Malloy that such business investments are iffy propositions. The venture capitalist terrain is littered with the dead bodies of venture capitalists who have gone broke investing private dollars in failing ventures.

How does the private market identify the right investment? Well, it consults the appropriate indicators and determines that, taken together, all the parts of the business under review have passed rather stringent tests that indicate its future will be a bright one. Mr. Malloy’s investments of state tax dollars in questionable businesses depend almost wholly on his vision of a future vibrant Connecticut economy – or, to put it in layman’s terms, wishful thinking.

Wishful thinking is the seed bed of Crony Capitalism, and Mr. Malloy’s thoughts concerning the future of his state certainly are grandiose. He wants Connecticut to be a leader in advanced medical research, and to this end he has showered favors upon – just to pick one of Mr. Malloy’s many investments – the UConn Health Center (UCHC). For many years UCHC was a tax sinkhole. But now that Mr. Malloy has attached Jackson Laboratories to the sink hole, it will… what? Non-profit research facilities such as Jackson Laboratories cannot turn a profit, which means such facilities cannot enlarge the state’s treasury. No matter: UCHC will become a more prestigious tax sinkhole, even if no water can be pressed out of that rock.

The winnowing process in the private economy that allows investors to determine profitable from non-profitable investment early on, before the investor loses his shirt and declares bankruptcy, is simply not present in government bankrolled crony capitalists ventures – where all bets are always for keeps.

Suppose Connecticut’s future prosperity does not lie in medical research? Then what?

There are two inescapable problems with crony capitalism. The first is that governors and presidents are not economic seers; they know far less than the private economy – which is driven by supply and demand – what the future portends. The second problem is every bit as serious. A dollar invested in venture A by Governor Know-It-All is a dollar taken from taxpayer B that, had it remained in the private marketplace, might have been more profitably invested in product C, thereby producing an invigorated economy that would have contributed more tax dollars to Governor-Know-It-All.

The private economy creates wealth; crony capitalism creates the illusion of wealth. If you have taken a bucket of water from the low end of the pool and dumped it into the deep end of the pool, have you raised the water level of the pool? Transfers of wealth do not create wealth.

Some commentators have caught on to the imposture. Noting that Mr. Malloy had favored Thompson International Speedway in Thompson, Connecticut  with a tax funded “loan of $800,000 at a sharply discounted interest rate for improvements at the auto racing track, $200,000 being forgivable if the track increases employment by 23 over two years,” Chris Powell of the Journal Inquirer writes in his column:

“But there are other auto racing tracks and mortgage companies in Connecticut, and helping just one of each disadvantages the others, and so what is created at one employer may be lost at another. This is a ‘command economy’ approach, with government picking winners and losers and defeating free markets. Because the ‘command economy’ approach transfers advantages more than it creates anything, it is unlikely to help the state's economy much.”

Well… not as much as it will help Mr. Malloy, who dispenses tax dollars to appreciative multibillion dollar companies, haul in campaign contributions to Connecticut’s crony capitalist Democratic Party.

It does not seem to matter much whether a carrot or a stick is used to pry campaign contributions from redundantly rich One-Percenters. If Obamacare ever gets off the ground, one may expect insurance giants to show their appreciation to the crony capitalists who had forced young people -- on pain of paying punishing fines – to purchase insurance they neither want nor need. For similar reasons, the multi-billion dollar companies upon which Mr. Malloy has showered millions in tax receipts or tax credits will show their gratitude when the campaign collector comes knocking on their doors. And that’s always good business for politicians.

Congress To Public, Let’em Eat ObamaCare

  

One of the founders of the American Republic, James Madison, wrote in Federalist No. 57 that the U.S. Congress would not likely frame laws that would be injurious to the general public because the members of Congress also would be affected by the same laws. The Congress, he wrote, “can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society.”

But the U.S. Congress, the Marie Antoinette of legislatures, has long since learned how to escape laws that members of Congress inflict upon others.

Marie Antoinette, not a Queen beloved by her subjects, was saddled with the quote “Let’em eat cake” by anti-monarchical revolutionists. She was supposed to have uttered this phrase after she had been told the French people were starving; in fact the phrase was launched into the hotbed of revolutionary France by Jean Jacques Rousseau in his autobiography published in 1782 but written in 1765 when the future Queen of France was nine years old. The phase was applied posthumously to the Queen, who actually was very charitable to the poor during her short reign.

No matter. The phrase today indicates the lofty unconcern of rulers with their subjects’ abject government induced conditions.

More than two years ago, commentator Stephen Carter, a Yale professor and author of several books, noted with a shrug of disapproval that Congress had just exempted its members from a pending law that applied to everyone else: “The recent publicity surrounding the very old news that members of Congress aren’t prohibited from trading stock using nonpublic information has the House and Senate running for cover. Hastily drafted bills are picking up co-sponsors on both sides of the aisle.

“Yet it is something of a wonder that there is so much public excitement at the discovery that regulations that apply to lots of other people turn out to be largely irrelevant to those who serve in Congress. This isn’t an exception to congressional practice. It is, far too often, business as usual.”

Mr. Carter provided some examples. Many businessmen, he noted, regard the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) as “the bane of their existence” because OSHA sometimes promulgates regulations that are just dumb. “Sometimes the rules are important. Sometimes they are silly. Either way, it’s no concern of our national legislature, which, in its wisdom, has exempted itself” from OSHA regulations.

Although the entire federal government is exempt from OSHA regulations, Congress, perhaps anticipating an adverse response from the toiling masses, the equivalent of Marie Antoinette’s starving masses, never-the-less required federal agencies to promulgate operational rules consistent with OSHA standards. These minimal requirements, however, do not apply to Congress – “which turns out not to be an agency.”

A sigh bursting from him, Mr. Carter notes: “Then there is financial regulation. Critics have lamented that no equivalent of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act applies to Congress. The chief executives of public companies must certify their accounts, and face fines of up to $5 million and as many as 20 years in prison if they do so falsely. Members of Congress (like all federal officials) can make up numbers out of whole cloth without any sanction at all. Incorrect corporate numbers can mislead markets. Incorrect federal budget numbers can mislead the nation. (Perhaps the federal budget, like corporate balance sheets, should be vetted by independent third-party auditors.)”

While federal minimum wage laws apply to private employers and federal agencies, Congress is exempt from the laws because it is not an agency. For the same reason, Congress is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. The National Labor Relations Act exempts the federal government generally, but special rules concerning collective bargaining and unfair labor practices apply to federal employees – but not to Congress.

No one should be surprised that the Congress is at it again, this time in connection with ObamaCare. Members of Congress and their staffs are required to participate in The Affordable Care Act (ACA). The requirement was supposed to acquaint congressmen with the rigors of ObamaCare they had imposed on the rest of the country. But some congressmen have slipped the noose.

Here in Connecticut, according to published reports, two members of Connecticut’s all Democratic Congressional delegation, U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty and U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, have decided not to follow in the footsteps of President Harry Truman, who enrolled as the first Medicare beneficiary in 1965 when the program came on line.

"I support the act,” Mr. Blumenthal said, “and believe that federal employees and members of Congress should have access to the new options for health insurance provided by the ACA, including what is available on their local exchanges," Blumenthal said in a statement to a newspaper.

Since Mr. Blumenthal supports ObamaCare, he also supports its mandatory requirements. Under the old dispensation, before ObamaCare arrived on the scene to the blare of heavenly trumpets, Mr. Blumenthal’s younger constituents were not forced under penalty of fines to purchase medical insurance. Mr. Blumenthal, who may freely choose whether he does or does not wish to enlist in ObamaCare, will be spared the fines that hang like a Damoclean sword over the heads of  younger people who are not congressmen and do not have the luxury of writing laws that do not operate on them.

One wonders how James Madison, quoted above, would have voted on the exemptions enjoyed by congressmen who in effect have said to their constituents “Let’em eat cake.”

Political Prospects in 2014

Skirmishing for the 2014 elections has already begun. Two Republican candidates have already given firm indications that they plan to run against the Democratic nominee for governor, most likely present Governor Dannel Malloy, although Mr. Malloy has not yet made a formal announcement. Victory in an election depends in large part on the prevailing circumstances of the moment, and we simply do not know what the prevailing circumstances will be in 2014.

But some things will have changed. President Barack Obama, very much underestimated by Republican prognosticators before the 2012 elections, will not be on the mid-term election ticket. Republicans may recall the now amusing predictions of Karl Rove and others just before the votes were tallied. Former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney was supposed to have edged out the sitting president, according to the calculations of Republican number crunches such as Dick Morris. 

Obama’s absence may be a plus or minus for Democrats whose seats are vulnerable depending – we’ve heard this before – on the state of the economy. Some economists say the economy is resurging; others think improving economic conditions are a false spring. The testimony of competing economists may remind the general public of the testimony of, say, state and defense psychologists at criminal trials. The defense and the prosecution both have their own psychologists and what is said by one putative expert is unsaid by the other.

The baleful effects of Obamacare have not yet kicked in, and the president has gone to some pains to see to it that the downside of Obamacare will not be apparent until after the election. The president’s “lead from behind” foreign policy has left the United States behind in the estimation some of its European friends. The economic downturn in Europe means, if it means anything at all, that Maggie Thatcher was right about socialism when she said, “The problem with socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money.” Europe is running out of options and, here in the United States, the Democrats’ social prescriptions are beginning to lose some zest. The Republican “war on women” was a useful campaign slogan back in 2012, but slogans are by nature political fads, and nothing in politics is more certain than the rapid passing of a fad.

All this is national, but it impinges somewhat on northeast state races because state Democrats have committed themselves to the operative script written by Obama’s Chicago playwrights in Washington DC. Some U.S. Senators and House members may have over committed themselves. At some point, as they are walking the plank and see below them the sharks circling in the waters, they may as easily un-commit themselves.

To a large extent, however, state politics is a local operation. Even so, one finds striking strategic and policy similarities between Connecticut’s progressive Democrats and national Democrats. The bite that modern progressivism has taken out of the Democratic Party hide, especially here in Connecticut, is significant.

At its core, progressivism is a statist doctrine. The blue-blooded progressive believes both the economy and society should be directed by governors and presidents. To the committed progressive, the doctrine of subsidiary – the notion that political solutions should issue from the smallest political unit affected by policy – is bosh. One detects a progressive imperative at work in Governor Dannel Malloy’s eagerness to interfere in every political transaction. This is a governor constitutionally incapable of minding his own business. And, of course, progressivism is irresistible catnip to Democratic politicians operating in a single party state such as Connecticut.

The progressive doctrine is an attractive one both for office holders and those involved in the media. Asked the question “What do you plan to DO once you are elected to office?” the progressive will answer without hesitation, “Anything and everything.”

He or she will wipe every tear, answer every sigh, and be prodigal with extravagant promises. To the same question, the conservative will answer, “As much as good sense will allow, and nothing that will disturb effective solutions that come from the people themselves.” This is not a satisfying answer for those who have been led to believe that politicians should help those who CAN help themselves without political angels hovering about them whispering heavenly commands in their ears.

The conservative answer leaves people, as much as possible, with their liberties and virtues intact. The trouble with moderns who expect to be coddled in the lap of the nanny state is that they are bored by virtue – as understood by the founders, a principle of action that leads to self-sufficiency -- and willing to surrender their liberty at the drop of a political promise. The conservative message is not one that sells well in the heat of a political campaign.

If one adds to all this the considerable advantages of incumbency and a media that appears to be rooting from the stands in favor of the Democratic one party state, Connecticut Republicans will in 2014 find they have a very rough row to hoe.

Obama’s Connecticut Praetorian Guard

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” -- George Orwell

George Orwell, like Jonathan Swift before him, is one of those large writers who simply straddle ideological categories. He was fortunate enough – or unfortunate enough, depending on one’s point of view – to have been born in what the ancient Chinese call “interesting times,” the bloody and totalitarian 20th century.

The revolutionist speaking truth to power often appears among us with a rope braided by the reigning powers draped about his neck. He steps towards gallows with a wan smile on his face.

Such was the case with Gregory Hicks, the friend and compatriot of slain Ambassador Christopher Stevens who, testifying before Congress, said he was stunned and embarrassed when he first heard U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice attribute the attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi to a crowd of protestors agitated by a video that defamed Mohammed. One expects that Mr. Hick’s many years of honorable service will soon crash on the rocks of modern politics.
 

The Obama administration had hoped to put the Benghazi affair to bed early, and then direct witnesses to the murder of the Libyan ambassador showed up at the Congressional doorstep. The unwelcomed visitations were followed by an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) scandal involving unaccountable delays of Tea Party applications for tax exempt status, which in turn was followed by yet another scandal involving phone taps placed by Eric Holder’s Department of Justice (DOJ) on Associated Press reporters. The IRS has since apologized for having politicized what should have been a routine review of applications.

Of the three scandals, only the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups for punitive treatment and the overbroad tapping of AP phone lines have been unreservedly condemned by Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional delegation. The condemnations by Connecticut Congresspersons of the IRS conform to a script adopted by the Obama administration, which unreservedly denounced what appeared to be an IRS enemies' list drawn up by as yet unknown persons who perhaps had been overstimulated by Mr. Obama’s frequently expressed condemnations of Tea Party Patriots.           

U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, for more than 20 years Connecticut’s crusading attorney general, was outraged at the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups for federal tax scrutiny and “deeply troubled” concerning reports that the DOJ had collected phone records from the Associated Press. U.S. Senator Chis Murphy’s reliance on the DOJ received a blow and he hopes “the leadership there is working steadfastly” to accomplish its mission. U.S. Representative Elizabeth Esty ventured further out than either of the state’s senators; the IRS allegations, she thought, “should concern all Americans. It’s completely unacceptable for the IRS to target groups or individuals based on their political views. A full Congressional investigation is warranted, and anyone who acted inappropriately or abused power must be held fully accountable.” U.S. Representative John Larson, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee that oversees the IRS, thought the IRS action were “absolutely inexcusable." U.S. Rep Rosa DeLauro entertained the hope “that those who participated in inappropriate activities are held fully accountable,” and U.S. Representative Joe Courtney was moved to tweet, “The actions taken by the IRS should alarm all Americans. A full investigation is warranted.”

The person in charge of the IRS unit that so disappointed Connecticut’s U.S. Congressional delegation, it should be mentioned, was given a promotion of sorts; she has been put in charge of the many hundreds of workers in the IRS who, as part of the implementation of Obamacare, will be rifling through health care records in an attempt to weed out frauds. Provided the frauds are not conservative, few insuperable obstacles may be put in their way – if the IRS processes are unreformed.
 

ABC News was among the first mainstream news outlets to report that “the Internal Revenue Service official in charge of overseeing tax-exempt organizations — an operation now under fire for targeting Tea Party groups and other right-wing entities — is now in charge of IRS accounting for President Obama’s health-care overhaul initiative, or Obamacare. Sarah Hall Ingram oversaw tax-exempt organizations for the IRS from 2009 to 2012. The misdeeds allegedly occurred at the IRS from 2010 to 2012.”

It is not known at this point how many of the distressed members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation oppose Mr. Obama’s stunningly inept appointment or what form their opposition to the appointment of Ms. Ingrahm might take. While Peter Weber of The Week has speculated that Ms. Ingram’s head may roll, it is a safe bet that it will not land in Mr. Blumenthal’s lap. Both Mr. Blumenthal and Mr. Murphy, since their fairly recent elevations to the U.S. Senate, have been stout supporters of all things Obama, and the entire Connecticut Congressional delegation is part of the vast Beltway Praetorian Guard charged with protecting the president’s idiocies.

 

Obama’s Problem, And Ours

It happens to the best of presidents. Sometime during the second term of popular presidents, the American people begin to bid goodbye to their chief executive, at which point the president begins to think of his legacy and hires a ghost writer to memorialize his time in office for future generations. Ground is broken, if only in the president’s mind, for a future library.

President Barack Obama is a popular, twice elected president. Some of his programs, however, never have been universally admired even within his own camp, which now begins to show stress fractures. Mr. Obama’s political methodology is, unsurprisingly, that of a left wing Chicago street organizer. During his presidency, Mr. Obama has spent an inordinate amount of time on the bully pulpit attempting to sell round pegs to square-hole purchasers in Congress. And he’s spent a great deal of money he does not have.

This parting of the ways, the fond farewell, often begins in Congress when the usual shakers and movers are gathered together in a room with the president and an idea or strategy is broached that, in the president’s first term, might have been greeted with loud hosannas and exuberant assents. Now it hangs in the air, a danger to the future prospect of all in the room. The actors in the room then shoot furtive glances at each other, and all but one suddenly realizes that there is but one lame duck among them. Time will smile upon the lame duck; his admirers within the fourth estate will continue reverently to mention his name in whispers. But ice will be in the air. The purposes of the president and the purposes of his loyal partisans will no longer be the same.

Josh Kraushar of the National Journal, an offshoot of The Atlantic magazine, generally regarded as left-liberal, examined the failure of Democrats to pass a mild version of gun control legislation. Some Democrats look forward to using the defeated legislation in future campaigns against benighted Republicans; and indeed, President Obama started the ball rolling moments after Democratic Majority leader Harry Reid pulled the bill because he could not summon the requisite number of votes in the Democratic controlled U.S. Senate to pass it.

“But the failure of Democrats to pass gun legislation (in a Democratic-controlled Senate) for a future presidential nominee to use against Republicans,” Mr. Krausher wrote, “makes the issue a lot less potent. One can imagine Hillary Rodham Clinton trying to shame, say, Marco Rubio for opposing a gun law that could be later claimed to have reduced crime. But without any law passed, it’s hard to imagine the gun issue being nearly as resonant as it is today in the wake of the horrific killings in Connecticut. And with Democrats being a significant obstacle to its passage, it muddles the message even more… Simply using the bully pulpit and making emotional appeals isn’t enough–it takes legislative know-how and a good working relationship with Congress, two areas this White House has struggled with since its difficulties passing a health care law and persuading the public of its merits.”

Even Maureen Dowd, a reliably left of center columnist for the New York Times, found it “unbelievable that with 90 percent of Americans on his side, he [President Obama] could get only 54 votes in the Senate. It was a glaring example of his weakness in using leverage to get what he wants. No one on Capitol Hill is scared of him.”

A few of the more obvious dents in the president’s armor would include: the continuing recession, the failure of the Obama administration to stimulate the economy with crony capitalist artificial stimulants, the inability of the administration to honestly confront the murder of an American ambassador and others in Benghazi and Obamacare – a very expensive baby step in the long progressive road to universal health care, at the end of which healthcare in the United States may come to resemble the health care dispensed at the Veteran's Administration hospital in Newington.

The head of the US Veteran's Affairs, retired Army General Eric Shinseki, came to Newtown recently to tout a new computerized processing system that some expect will shorten seemingly interminable wait times on claims. Standing at his elbow, in sight of the cameras, was U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal: “Among the most common complaints I get is the seemingly endless delays," Mr. Blumenthal said.

Among Mr. Blumenthal’s complainants is veteran Paul Barron: “I've been waiting three years for disability, I'm trying for 100%. I got Hepatitis C from the shots they give you in the Army.”

Backlogs and government administered programs go together like “a horse and carriage,” as the song has it.

The gun control legislation recently passed in Connecticut has resulted in a spate of gun purchases and a paperwork backlog for state police, who must approve the purchases. The backlog on transfer applications for gun ownership has soared from 1,000 in December to 62,000 following passage of the most severe gun regulations in the nation.

State Police Col. Danny Stebbins, who has been in communication with Governor Dannel Malloy’s Office of Policy and Management  “every other week regarding how to address the backlogs” told a wide-eyed legislative committee, according to a report in CTNewsJunkie, that the backlog had not been anticipated. “All of these things are behind because we don’t have people to keep up… all this will come with a cost,” Mr. Stebbins said. Some of the tasks, he added, could be done by civilian personnel.

So it may be with Obamacare: Who knew?

How You Know When an Election Is Over

You know when an election in Connecticut is over when virtually all incumbent Democrats are re-elected to office, after having been fulsomely endorsed by much of the state’s left of center media, and when, several days after the election, bad news headlines begin to appear in Connecticut’s only state-wide newspaper:“State’s Medicaid Costs Soar, Projected Budget Deficit Attributed In Part to Expanded Coverage.” That headline appeared in a Hartford paper as a front page above the fold story a little less than two weeks after the election.

According to the story, we discover that the state’s $365 million budget deficit “dates, in part, to two years ago when Connecticut became the first state to expand medical coverage to low-income adults as an early adopter of federal health care reform.” The federal health care reform program is Obamacare. The architects of Obamacare were careful to front load the program with alluring benefits; payments for the alluring benefits were deferred until after the election.

That would be – now.

Two years ago, Connecticut was plowing the field in preparation for Obamacare. In 2010, we discover from the story: “Connecticut had the largest percentage increase of any state in Medicaid enrollment among low-income adults — a 32 percent jump, not an insignificant bump on the spending Richter scale.

Governor Dannel Malloy’s budget hawk Ben Barnes, secretary of the state's Office of Policy and Management, must have felt the tremors long ago. Asked to account for the Malloy $365 million budget deficit – the governor prefers to think of it as an easily backfilled “shortfall” – Mr. Barnes said, “The number of people enrolled in that program has shot up.” He also notes, “One, the economy has been poor. More people have been impoverished as a result of high unemployment, things of that nature."

How long ago did Mr. Barnes sense the economy was underperforming? Long, long ago. The economy was underperforming, President Barack Obama never tires of reminding us, since the Bush recession; that would be more than four years ago.

Under the enlightened leadership of Mr. Malloy, Connecticut had been stuffing the state’s revenue sock since the governor presented his first SEBAC inspired budget, which included a massive boost in taxes – the largest increase, in fact, in the state’s history. And a new healthcare exchange was inaugurated in the state long ago to prepare for Obamacare, promoted by Democrats during their campaigns as a more prudent less expensive health care instrument.

Tilling the field for Obamacare, Connecticut shelved its old heath care system, State Administered General Assistance (SAGA), and instituted a new Medicaid Low Income Adult program (HUSKY Part D) in 2010. Under the old system, SAGA serviced people from ages 21 to 64; under the new Medicaid Low Income Adult program the eligibility age was lowered two years to19, thus increasing the number of health care consumers. Under SAGA, benefits were extended only to people who held less than $1,000 in assets, though beneficiaries were permitted to own a home and a car worth $4,500 or less. As Mr. Barnes put it, “You could essentially have one crummy, old car and no money in the bank, or a couple hundred dollars in the bank, and still qualify. But if you had any assets at all [apart from the crummy old car and a house] then you didn't qualify. You had to spend down those assets on medical services before you were eligible. So, that ruled some people out of eligibility."

Under the Obama-Malloy-Barnes new health care system, limits on assets were eliminated – would Linda McMahon qualify? – benefits are more“robust” (translation: more expensive) and the program kicks in at an earlier age. These “improvements” necessarily increase the cost of the program. Connecticut has not yet received from Washington a waiver filed last summer that would impose a $10,000 asset eligibility test for the Medicaid program for low-income adults, and the federal government, currently reimbursing Connecticut for 50 percent of the program, will not reimburse the state fully under the Affordable Care Act until 2014.

Why then, should anyone be surprised that the new Medicaid Low Income Adult program has kicked a hole in Connecticut’s budget bucket?

The post-election story in the Hartford paper helpfully provided the relevant statistics: “In two years, Medicaid enrollment by low-income adults has grown from fewer than 50,000 to more than 83,000, greatly outpacing the state's expectations, according to state figures. Total Medicaid enrollment was 588,488 at the end of the last fiscal year in June, up 13,676 in a year.”

Surely the state figures were available to both Mr. Malloy and Mr. Barnes. Two years is 730 days, a little less than 105 weeks, 8,760 hours in which to ponder projected costs, Mr. Barnes’ specialty.

Here is the truth: Everybody knew, much before the elections, that Obamacare would cost the states millions of dollars. Mr. Obama knew, Mr. Malloy knew, Mr. Barnes knew, all the Democrats in both national and state legislatures knew, publishers of newspapers knew, newspaper editors who endorsed here in Connecticut every single incumbent Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation knew. Everyone but voters -- prior to the election -- knew that Connecticut was marching lemming-like towards the edge of a fiscal cliff, piped in that direction by sweet talking politicians with more curves in their courses than a slinky.

And now -- after all Connecticut incumbent Democrats have been tucked into their comfortable sinecures -- the rest of us are, at long last, permitted to know.

Should a media that allows itself to be so misused any longer be permitted to call itself free – or even useful?

Obama Victorious, Taxes To Rise

Those opposed to Obamacare, virtually all Republicans, probably should have realized that the Supreme Court does not convene to decide political issues. On Thursday – And here one can hear disappointed Republicans grumbling, “A day that will live in infamy…” – the Supreme Court adroitly stepped over the political puddle, leaving Obamacare, apart from some few minor adjustments, virtually intact.

Republicans had argued that the mandate provision, which assigned a penalty for people or businesses that declined to bow their necks to the Obamacare scimitar, was unconstitutional. Should the court find the provision constitutional, it would herald in a new and ruinous doctrine; namely, that the federal government can order citizens to purchase a service or product, a power never before exercised by congress. The court decision said, in effect, that Congress had no constitutional authority to claim such power through appeal to the commerce clause.

Obamacare was sold to congress – and the American public –with the proviso that it would not be financed through taxes, a political problem avoided when the Democratic architects of Obamacare decided to finance the additional costly charges the program entailed though a penalty fee assigned to those who did not wish to purchase health care insurance.

The justices shut down the commerce clause in the Constitution as a pretext that would allow the state to compel citizens to purchase a product or suffer a severe monetary penalty; a significant majority of the justices agreed on this point, including Justice Roberts. But Roberts, in his unprincipled decision, opened a door the majority of justices thoughtthey had firmly locked and bolted. The constitutionality of the Obamacare bill ultimately depended, the majority asserted in a decision written by Roberts, on nomenclature: It would have been unconstitutional for Congress to assign a penalty fee for non-compliance; but if Congress were to raise the requisite money through a tax, President Barack Obama could overleap the constitutional hurdle.

One left of center commentator, George Stephanopoulos of ABCNews questioned President Obama closely in September 2009 concerning his instance that the proviso was not a tax:

STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it’s still a tax increase.

OBAMA: No. That’s not true, George. The — for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it’s saying is, is that we’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I’m not covering all the costs.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it may be fair, it may be good public policy…

OBAMA: No, but — but, George, you — you can’t just make up that language and decide that that’s called a tax increase. Any…

STEPHANOPOULOS: Here’s the…

OBAMA: What — what — if I — if I say that right now your premiums are going to be going up by 5 or 8 or 10 percent next year and you say well, that’s not a tax increase; but, on the other hand, if I say that I don’t want to have to pay for you not carrying coverage even after I give you tax credits that make it affordable, then…

STEPHANOPOULOS: I — I don’t think I’m making it up. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary: Tax — “a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.”

OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition. I mean what…

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, no, but…

OBAMA: …what you’re saying is…

STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase.

OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I’m taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we’re going to have an individual mandate or not, but…

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it’s a tax increase?

OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.

Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision, the non-partisanCongressional Budget Office (CBO) determined that Obamacare would be very costly indeed. Initially projected at a cost of $940 million, the CBO determined way back in mid-March that Obamacare would cost $1.76 trillion over a ten year period. In September, 2009, Mr. Obama's pitch to the congress that passed the bill was considerably understated: “Now, add it all up, and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years -- less than we have spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and less than the tax cuts for the wealthiest few Americans that Congress passed at the beginning of the previous administration."

The Obamacare bill contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and small businesses, one of the largest tax increases in American history.

The list below, provided by Americans For Tax reform and arranged by effective dates, records the $500 billion-plus in tax hikes over the next ten years. The list indicates where to find the taxes in the bill and how much taxes are scheduled to increase as of June 14.

Taxes that took effect in 2010:

1. Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals(Min$/immediate): $50,000 per hospital if they fail to meet new "community health assessment needs," "financial assistance," and "billing and collection" rules set by HHS. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,961-1,971

2. Codification of the “economic substance doctrine” (Tax hike of $4.5 billion). This provision allows the IRS to disallow completely-legal tax deductions and other legal tax-minimizing plans just because the IRS deems that the action lacks“substance” and is merely intended to reduce taxes owed. Bill: Reconciliation Act; Page: 108-113

3. “Black liquor” tax hike (Tax hike of $23.6 billion). This is a tax increase on a type of bio-fuel. Bill: Reconciliation Act; Page: 105

4. Tax on Innovator Drug Companies($22.2 bil/Jan 2010): $2.3 billion annual tax on the industry imposed relative to share of sales made that year. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,971-1,980

5. Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tax Hike ($0.4 bil/Jan 2010): The special tax deduction in current law for Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies would only be allowed if 85 percent or more of premium revenues are spent on clinical services. Bill: PPACA; Page: 2,004

6. Tax on Indoor Tanning Services($2.7 billion/July 1, 2010): New 10 percent excise tax on Americans using indoor tanning salons. Bill: PPACA; Page: 2,397-2,399

Taxes that took effect in 2011:

7. Medicine Cabinet Tax ($5 bil/Jan 2011): Americans no longer able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin). Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,957-1,959

8. HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike ($1.4 bil/Jan 2011): Increases additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,959

Tax that took effect in 2012:

9. Employer Reporting of Insurance on W-2 (Min$/Jan 2012): Preamble to taxing health benefits on individual tax returns. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,957

Taxes that take effect in 2013:

10. Surtax on Investment Income ($123 billion/Jan. 2013): Creation of a new, 3.8 percent surtax on investment income earned in households making at least $250,000 ($200,000 single). This would result in the following top tax rates on investment income: Bill: Reconciliation Act; Page: 87-93

	Capital Gains	Dividends	Other*
2012	15%	15%	35%
2013+	23.8%	43.4%	43.4%

*Other unearned income includes (for surtax purposes) gross income from interest, annuities, royalties, net rents, and passive income in partnerships and Subchapter-S corporations. It does not include municipal bond interest or life insurance proceeds, since those do not add to gross income. It does not include active trade or business income, fair market value sales of ownership in pass-through entities, or distributions from retirement plans. The 3.8% surtax does not apply to non-resident aliens.

11. Hike in Medicare Payroll Tax($86.8 bil/Jan 2013): Current law and changes:

	First $200,000 ($250,000 Married) Employer/Employee	All Remaining Wages Employer/Employee
Current Law	1.45%/1.45% 2.9% self-employed	1.45%/1.45% 2.9% self-employed
Obamacare Tax Hike	1.45%/1.45% 2.9% self-employed	1.45%/2.35% 3.8% self-employed

Bill: PPACA, Reconciliation Act; Page: 2000-2003; 87-93

12. Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers ($20 bil/Jan 2013): Medical device manufacturers employ 360,000 people in 6000 plants across the country. This law imposes a new 2.3% excise tax. Exempts items retailing for <$100. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,980-1,986

13. Raise "Haircut" for Medical Itemized Deduction from 7.5% to 10% of AGI ($15.2 bil/Jan 2013): Currently, those facing high medical expenses are allowed a deduction for medical expenses to the extent that those expenses exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI). The new provision imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI. Waived for 65+ taxpayers in 2013-2016 only. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,994-1,995

14. Flexible Spending Account Cap – aka “Special Needs Kids Tax” ($13 bil/Jan 2013): Imposes cap on FSAs of $2500 (now unlimited). Indexed to inflation after 2013. There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education. Bill: PPACA; Page: 2,388-2,389

15. Elimination of tax deduction for employer-provided retirement Rx drug coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D ($4.5 bil/Jan 2013) Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,994

16. $500,000 Annual Executive Compensation Limit for Health Insurance Executives ($0.6 bil/Jan 2013). Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,995-2,000

Taxes that take effect in 2014:

17. Individual Mandate Excise Tax (Jan 2014): Starting in 2014, anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance must pay an income surtax according to the higher of the following

	1 Adult	2 Adults	3+ Adults
2014	1% AGI/$95	1% AGI/$190	1% AGI/$285
2015	2% AGI/$325	2% AGI/$650	2% AGI/$975
2016 +	2.5% AGI/$695	2.5% AGI/$1390	2.5% AGI/$2085

Exemptions for religious objectors, undocumented immigrants, prisoners, those earning less than the poverty line, members of Indian tribes, and hardship cases (determined by HHS).Bill: PPACA; Page: 317-337

18. Employer Mandate Tax (Jan 2014): If an employer does not offer health coverage, and at least one employee qualifies for a health tax credit, the employer must pay an additional non-deductible tax of $2000 for all full-time employees. Applies to all employers with 50 or more employees. If any employee actually receives coverage through the exchange, the penalty on the employer for that employee rises to $3000. If the employer requires a waiting period to enroll in coverage of 30-60 days, there is a $400 tax per employee ($600 if the period is 60 days or longer).Bill: PPACA; Page: 345-346

Combined score of individual and employer mandate tax penalty: $65 billion/10 years

19. Tax on Health Insurers ($60.1 bil/Jan 2014): Annual tax on the industry imposed relative to health insurance premiums collected that year. Phases in gradually until 2018. Fully-imposed on firms with $50 million in profits. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,986-1,993

Taxes that take effect in 2018:

20. Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans ($32 bil/Jan 2018): Starting in 2018, new 40 percent excise tax on “Cadillac” health insurance plans ($10,200 single/$27,500 family). Higher threshold ($11,500 single/$29,450 family) for early retirees and high-risk professions. CPI +1 percentage point indexed. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,941-1,956

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The Courant And Catholics

The magisterium of the Hartford Courant -- its editorial board -- has issued a pronouncement on the matter of an interpretation of a federal bill by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius that would require Catholic institutions to assist in dispensing birth control pills and abortifacients.

The ex-cathedra pronouncement from Courant editors opens with the following lede:

“Roman Catholic protests against certain requirements of the health care reform law, though heartfelt, are misplaced. No one’s first amendments rights are being compromised, and – despite loud cries to the contrary – religious liberty is not in jeopardy…”

There are at the moment numerous suits filed by Catholic prelates and institutions challenging the constitutionality of Ms. Sebelius’interpretation of the Obamacare bill. The Supreme Court is due to rule on the bill before its session closes at the end of June. The Obamacare bill very well may be unconstitutional, in which case the entire bill will be overthrown– because the Solons who wrote the law did not include in it a severability clause that would have permitted its authors to retain portions of the bill not deemed unconstitutional by the high court.

While the Courant’s obiter dictum that “no one’s First Amendment rights are being compromised” certainly is heartfelt, it is premature. A late Associated Press report advises that the Obama administration is taking precautions should the Supreme Court strike down Obamacare as unconstitutional.

One of the objections made by Catholic bishops to Ms. Sebelius’interpretation of the Obamacare bill is that the state should not be permitted to determine the mission of any Christian Church. And by “church” the bishops mean “both clerics and laity united in the faith.”

In connection with the Catholic Church, G. K. Chesterton speaks of the “democracy of the dead,” and it is a common belief among Catholics that their “church” includes all who, from the beginning of the world, have believed in the one true God, and have been made His children by grace, a very large assembly indeed

Since pre-Civil War days, churches and the American state have developed a tender political ecology that leaves both state and church unentangled in a church-state alliance, so that churches could enjoy the wide door of liberty vouchsafed to them by that clause in the First amendment that prevents the state from restricting the free exercise of religion, as determined by religious institutions. As soon as one allows the state to fix in law the mission of a church, this organic political accommodation is overthrown, and the authoritarian state then is permitted to determine the boundaries of religious expression, a commonplace occurrence in all fascist authoritarian regimes such as the former Soviet Union or present day China.

Brave Courant editorialists do not fear to enter—with hobnailed boots -- where the better angels of our natures, not to mention those of the founders of the nation and the U.S. Constitution, fear to tread.

“When operating colleges and hospitals,” the Courant magisterium writes, “Catholics step out of a purely religious setting into one that must comply with the laws of the country, which may not necessarily be the laws of the church. The Church of Rome, for example, admits only men to the priesthood; but when Catholic colleges or hospitals hire administrators, they must adhere to federal laws forbidding employment discrimination on the basis of sex.”

No one has yet suggested to Courant editorialists that since for purposes of law Catholic administrators consider priests to be independent contractors, the Roman Catholic Church SHOULD be forced by the civil authority to hire women as priests. Nothing in its editorial interpretation would forestall such a use of force.

What the paper is saying is this: In any Catholic institution – a university or a hospital, to mention but two instances – in which Catholics mix with non-Catholics, the Catholic layperson loses his or her Catholic character and therefore is no longer entitled to the constitutional protections afforded Catholics who find themselves in an unadulterated religious setting such as a mass.

This view not only radically redefines the mission of a church; it redefines the meaning of the very concept of a church – which, in the Catholic understanding, is the unity of clergy and laity in the faith. Under the Catholic definition of a “church,” a Catholic non-cleric is not less Catholic than a priest. And religious obligations weigh upon him or her no less heavily than they weigh upon church administrators.

It is absolute nonsense – a radical categorical mistake, a form of linguistic anarchy – to say that a Catholic cannot be Catholic in a partly secular setting. It would be like saying a Courant editorialist ceases to be an editorial writer when he is not writing editorials or that the sun ceases to be a sun at night or that blue is really red when it is found beside red in a child’s paint box.

Catholicism, which is an articulation of the historic church, inheres in people, not buildings. A Catholic does not become less Catholic when he leaves a church service and goes forth into the world to live his faith by establishing Catholic universities and hospitals and services for the poor. And the radical secular, anti-Catholic, re-interpretation of a church-- the operative principle of Obamacare -- applies not just to Catholics, but to all religious laypersons, whatever their creed. Obamacare severly punishes Christians and obliges them to abjure the precepts of their faith when they work in a Christian institutions that has in it one non-professing Christian.

The Courant concludes its editorial by deploring the “various groups” -- mostly Christians adhering to Matthew 5:16 – for having created a muddle: “The arguments over the adherence to the health care reform law is muddled by various groups’ claims that abortion is somehow involved. It isn’t. Birth control, and only birth control, is the issue.”

However, all of the arguments put forward by Courant editorialists to thwart Catholic opposition to birth control in Catholic institutions apply with event more force to abortion, which directly involves health issues. Why would a law forcing Catholic hospitals to provide patients with abortifacients not also force the same Catholic institutions to provide abortions?

Courant editorialists are not jesuitical enough to carve out an exception prohibiting abortions in Catholic hospitals that would not also prohibit such institutions from providing abortifacients or other forms of contraception. This is the next step for radical social anarchists who seek to so narrowly circumscribe religious faith that it will have no effect on the brave new world of their dreams. Once the nose of Ms. Sebelius’ the camel is in the tent, it will push out all religious based social restraints.

The authoritarian state, on its way to fascism, cannot abide such mediating religious institutions as Christian hospitals, schools and soup kitchens. All good works must either originate or be heavily regulated by the fascist or corporatist state as defined by Benito Mussolini: “Everything in the state; nothing outside the state; nothing above the state.”

The new Brave New World of Orwell awaits its administrators, its Newspeak and its radical redefinition of liberty – liberty for me, not for thee.