Malloy vs. Pelto

The gubernatorial nomination on the Republican side is heavily, if politely, contested. In a few days, Republican nominating delegates will gather at Mohegan Sun Casino to sort out their ticket. On the Democratic side, the gubernatorial slot is a Malloy gimme – almost.

State employee union gadfly Jonathan Pelto continues to sting Governor Dannel Malloy.

Mr. Malloy’s temperament, like that of President Barack Obama, is sting averse. The Malloyalists who surround him sting back when stung. Both they and their chief have thin skins. And Mr. Malloy, when caught in a compromising position, has been known to throw a few elbows at his critics.

In the past, whenever Mr. Pelto had harpooned Mr. Malloy on his blog “Wait, What?” gubernatorial factotum Roy Occhiogrosso, who has parleyed his Malloy connection into a Vice Presidential slot with Global Strategy, leapt forward to answer Mr. Pelto with a box on the ear.

“No one cares what Pelto thinks,” said Mr. Occhiogrosso after Mr. Pelto had pelted Mr. Malloy for having joined the forces of darkness by attempting to purge Connecticut’s educational system of underperforming teachers who, Mr. Malloy felt, had only to “show up for four years” to achieve tenure, after which dismissal for rank incompetence becomes decidedly less frequent.

Even so, Mr. Malloy last January issued a letter underwritten by Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, House Speaker Brendan Sharkey and Senate President Donald E. Williams that delayed, according to one report “an important component of the new evaluation system: linking a teacher's performance rating with students' standardized test scores. Malloy also said he would create a working group to make changes in the implementation of the new Common Core State Standards. The administration will also scrap a $1 million marketing campaign for the Common Core.”

The decoupling of teacher performance and test scores, as well as the canning of a million dollar marketing campaign for Common Core, strenuously resisted by both teacher unions and many conservative groups, certainly did not bode ill for Mr. Pelto.

Conservatives and teacher unions oppose the Common Core effort for quite different reasons. Teacher unions are rather touchy on standards of any kind linked to student performance that might be used to weed out non-performing teachers; conservatives, comfortable with the principle of subsidiarity, do not want the federal government to do to education what it has done to, say, the private insurance market.

We have here a case of political ends touching and producing unmanageable political sparks. Without abjectly retreating from his school reform efforts – not in the cards -- Mr. Malloy has bent himself into a pretzel shape so as to remain in the good graces of the powerful unions whose votes he needs to whip in a general election the Republican Party’s gubernatorial nominee. Once the election is in the bag, Mr. Pelto will have been politically neutered, and Mr. Malloy’s education reforms, momentarily put on the back burner, may be resurrected from the “working group” to which the reforms have been entrusted for safe keeping. To parody Mr. Obama in his pre-presidential election meeting with Dimitri Medvedev, Mr. Malloy will have considerably “more flexibility,” following his victorious election, to repair burnt bridges with unions and to deep six the annoying Mr. Pelto.

There are three reasons why candidates for office enter campaigns: They’re in it to win; they’re in it to make an exotic political point; or they’re in it to affect the correlation of forces, so that the candidate’s views will be upheld by the likely candidate in a general election.

At this point, only Mr. Pelto and his conscience knows which of the three reasons cited above has moved him to suggest, very coyly in an appearance on Eyewitness News’ “Face The State” with Dennis House that a) Mr. Malloy can’t win the race for governor, and b) he might primary Mr. Malloy, if the delegates to the Democratic nominating convention are not enlightened enough to choose him on the first ballot as their gubernatorial standard bearer.

WFSB 3 Connecticut

Malloy On The Stump, An Orwellian Perspective

A few weeks after announcing he would not officially begin his campaign until the General Assembly had shut down its short three month session in May, Governor Dannel Malloy officially opened his gubernatorial campaign in Stamford, his old political stomping grounds. Mr. Malloy had been mayor of Stamford for four four-year terms before becoming governor.

In Stamford, Mr. Malloy explained his “early” announcement to reporters who long ago had exploded the absurdity that he was not running for governor. He had in fact been campaigning behind the veil for some time; like his counterpart in the beltway, President Barack Obama, Mr. Malloy is a perpetual campaigner. And like most politicians, he is given to telling what Mark Twain used to call “stretchers.”

The Stamford Advocate reported on the switcheroo:

“Malloy said that, in part, his rationale for waiting to make his re-election effort official was to avoid distractions during his recent successful effort to get the General Assembly to enact legislation to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

"’I didn't want to politicize that issue unduly,’ Malloy said. ‘I talked to Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman several times about when is the right time to start the campaign, and this seemed like the right time.’"

The General Assembly, some reporters know, is Mr. Malloy’s Pomeranian, the Connecticut legislature having been dominated by Democrats ages ago, long before some of the state’s younger reporters were wetting their diapers. Perhaps one of them is keeping a record of Mr. Malloy’s politically opportune fantasies. If so, he or she will understand the full import of George Orwell’s remark that “To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.”

In an essay that ought to be required reading in all journalism schools titled “Under Your Nose,” Mr. Orwell wrote:

“The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: The only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

Mr. Malloy’s official Stamford announcement gave Mr. Malloy the opportunity to stop road testing his campaign and launch his vehicle.

Mr. Malloy’s 2014 campaign appears to be a replication of President Barack Obama 2012 presidential campaign. Connecticut has been battered by a rough economic climate, Mr. Malloy told the Democratic in Stamford. He was careful not to draw the connection between Connecticut’s sluggish economy and Obamanomics. Hey, sluggish economies happen. The national recession ended in 2009. However, about three in five jobs added since the recession’s end pay less than $13.83 per hour. Lower-wage occupations were 21 percent of recession losses and 58 percent of recovery growth, while mid-wage occupations were 60 percent of recession losses and only 22 percent of recovery growth. Connecticut still lags behind the nation in job growth. As of August 2013, the New England Economic Partnership (NEEP) reported, “Connecticut had regained 62,200 jobs, or 51.3% of those lost. By comparison, the U.S. economy had recovered 78.2% of the 8.6 million recession jobs that it lost.”

During his first term as president, Mr. Obama commanded the heights: The presidency and both houses of Congress had fallen to Democrats. Instead of focusing the energies of his office on repairing the collapsed housing market – which would have been a painful ordeal for the progressive president – Mr. Obama reached for the stars and pulled Obamacare out of his hat. He also engaged in corporate cronyism on a massive scale and managed to pull off a win against moderate Republican Mitt Romney by capturing the “social issues” battleground from which Republicans had retreated with their tails between their legs.

Mr. Malloy’s campaign strategy may be deduced from the remarks he made in Stamford. The Malloy program no doubt has been laboratory tested by one of the many strategy groups in the business of winning campaigns. Global Strategy, whose Vice President Roy Occhiogrosso continued to speak in news reports in favor of Mr. Malloy long after he had disassociated himself from the Malloy administration, likely will play some behind the curtain role in Mr. Malloy’s re-election effort. But as governor of a northeast progressive state, Mr. Malloy will be able to draw upon a vast reservoir of political magicians, some tied by progressive political umbilical cords to the Obama administration, many of which are not formally associated with political parties.

In Stamford, Mr. Malloy said that Connecticut’s economy was on the mend, largely owing to his programs. Connecticut’s pre-Malloy “$3.6 billion deficit, the greatest deficit in the nation on a per-capita basis," has been liquidated. In fact, the deficit has been resilient to Mr. Malloy’s ministrations.

Connecticut’s non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis (OFA) and the Governor's budget office, the Office of Policy and Management (OPM), have both projected a deficit of about $1 billion in the next 2016 biennial budget. 

Mr. Malloy reduced a major portion of his “inherited deficit” through the imposition of the largest tax increase in state history, a $1.5 billion tax on entrepreneurs and business people who might have used the dollars appropriated by a Democratic Governor and a Democratic dominated General Assembly to invigorate Connecticut’s painfully slow, nearly jobless recovery.

Mr. Malloy’s tax increase was not mentioned during his re-election stump speech in Stamford, which is on a par with offering a history of the Elizabethan period in Britain that does not mention Queen Elizabeth. Neither did Mr. Malloy mention that Republican Governors Jodi Rell and John Rowland did not have at their command a Republican dominated General Assembly. Although it is the legislature that shapes and affirms budgets presented to it by the executive office, Mr. Malloy was content in his Stamford re-election announcement to lay at Mrs. Rell’s feet the debt he inherited. Mrs. Rell is likely to play in Mr. Malloy’s coming campaign the same opéra bouff role played by outgoing President George Bush in Mr. Obama’s first – and second – presidential campaigns.

Mr. Orwell noted in his “Under Your Nose” essay that political fantasies eventually bump into reality, at which point, usually too late, those who have been lulled to sleep awaken with truth-blistered eyes:

“In private life most people are fairly realistic. When one is making out one's weekly budget, two and two invariably make four. Politics, on the other hand, is a sort of sub-atomic or non-Euclidean world where it is quite easy for the part to be greater than the whole or for two objects to be in the same place simultaneously. Hence the contradictions and absurdities I have chronicled above, all finally traceable to a secret belief that one's political opinions, unlike the weekly budget, will not have to be tested against solid reality.”

Sullivan Laughs, McKinney Gags

Last Year the state – i.e. Governor Dannel Malloy and majority Democrats in Connecticut’s General Assembly -- decided to end its long-time practice of sending out paper checks for tax refunds. The state decided instead to use refund cards for a variety of purposes, including the refunding of tax over-payments.

When state Senate leader John McKinney, now a Republican gubernatorial hopeful, called for a hearing on the change, autocratic Democrats snickered that a public hearing was quite unnecessary. Indeed, the Republican Party, it would seem, was quite unnecessary. Go away.

It turns out that some data in the cards has now been exposed to possible identity theft. About 14,335 accounts have been breached, and State tax commissioner Kevin Sullivan, who once served in the state Senate with Mr. McKinney, is still snickering.

Mr. McKinney once again has called for a hearing, this time on the breach of private information, including social security numbers and other data that those affected by the breach would rather not share with potential criminals. Mr. Sullivan has responded, “Senator McKinney wants to have a hearing on everything, and I appreciate that his gubernatorial campaign needs [publicity]. His response to everything is to have a hearing.’’

Naturally, Democrats such as Mr. Sullivan, who now control all the levers of state government – including the governor’s office, both houses of the General Assembly, committee chairs and appreciative judges– are hearing shy, because public hearings tend to shine a spotlight in dark corners and prevent autocratic Democrats from hiding political dirt under their rugs. Progressive experts especially would rather banish from the halls of power taxpayers and other milch cows who do not understand that governing is best left to credentialed experts in government, provided they are progressive enthusiasts and not odious members of the Tea Party.

One understands; one sympathizes. In a one party state, the governing class can well afford to overlook such democratic measures in support of ethical government as public hearings and bi-partisan legislatures. The governing autocrat does not appreciate eyes – hostile eyes at that! – peering over his shoulder when he wants to slip one by alert members of the General Assembly, or reward with an unexamined contract someone who may contribute generously to his campaign, or stave off an annoying question put to him by a wide-awake reporter not yet in thrall to the prevailing regime.

Mr. Sullivan has advised Mr. McKinney that any problems arising from the selection of JP Morgan Chase as a business agent responsible for the hacked accounts will be settled, so to speak, in-house. The legislature, so far, has not been involved in crafting the public’s business; why complicate matters by insisting on a public hearing now?  

Following Mr. Sullivan’s too hasty rejection of Mr. McKinney’s call for a legislative investigation, Mr. McKinney noted he had sent a letter to Mr. Sullivan and state Treasurer Denise Nappier: “If Commissioner Sullivan is afraid to come before the legislature and answer questions, I would hope he would answer the questions I sent him in the letter. It is certainly not in keeping with an administration that claims to be open and transparent. The old cliché is if you have nothing to hide, why don’t you come out and talk about it?’’

Why indeed? A frank and unvarnished answer to Mr. McKinney’s question might run as follows: 1) Mr. Malloy has made it clear from the beginning of his administration that minority Republicans are not to play a significant role in the state’s new one party government, a message first pressed upon Republicans when Mr. Malloy shooed them from the room during budget negotiations with Connecticut’s fourth branch of government, public employee unions; 2) public hearings are unnecessary in any progressive government that relies chiefly upon “rule by a body of experts,” most of whom are engaged in refashioning the state along lines acceptable to enlightened progressives; 3) in case non-progressives in Connecticut’s new one party state are having some difficulty in deciphering the operative rule of the Malloy administration, it is this: Everything in the progressive state; nothing outside the progressive state; nothing above the progressive state. Is that clear enough?

But, of course, Mr. Sullivan and other Malloyalists may wish to dress up their messages in more acceptable rhetorical garb – furnished, as usual, by such experts as Mr. Roy Occhiogrosso, Vice President of Global Strategy and Mr. Malloy’s flack catcher in waiting.

Blumenthal’s Snippit

U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s awkward false claim, made or intimated several times, that he had served as a marine in Vietnam rose out of the newspaper morgues recently after former New York Times political writer Ray Hernandez joined a Washington D.C. PR firm.

The story in the Hartford Courant, “NY Times Reporter Who Was Fed Blumenthal Vietnam Scoop Will Join DC Firm Led By One Time McMahon Adviser”, actually is a story about a story, a story twice removed.

The story concerning a move by former New York Times reporter Ray Hernandez to the Washington PR firm DCI Group was first mentioned by Politico reporter Dylan Byers in a brief story, “NYT's Ray Hernandez to DCI Group”.

The Courant story is brief enough to be included here in full:

Dylan Byers of Politico reported that former New York Times political writer Ray Hernandez is joining a Washington PR firm.

Normally the comings and goings of journalists aren’t that interesting but in this case, as Byers noted, Hernandez’ move merits a mention. Back in 2010, Hernandez broke the story that now Sen. Richard Blumenthal falsely claimed he served in Vietnam.

The story was built upon a snippet of video from an obscure event in Norwalk several years earlier. Almost immediately, people began to speculate that video was unearthed by the crack opposition research team of Blumethal’s (sic) multimillionaire Republican opponent, Linda McMahon.

Columnist Kevin Rennie wrote the following on his blog right after the Times story broke: “The Blumenthal Bombshell comes at the end of more than 2 months of deep, persistent research by Republican Linda McMahon’s Senate campaign,” Rennie wrote. “It gave the explosive Norwalk video recording to The Times.”

Ed Patru, McMahon’s 2010 media strategist, fessed up to the Connecticut Mirror. ”We got our hands on it,” Patru told @CTMirrorPaz shortly after the story broke.

Flash forward more than three years later: Hernandez is leaving the Times to work at DCI Group, a public relations firm where Patru is vice president. Coincidence?

That last word – Coincidence? – hangs in the Courant story like a hangman’s noose. Of course it’s not a coincidence, you ninny. The McMahon campaign slips to a New York Times reporter “a snippit of video” showing Mr. Blumenthal lying about his service in Vietnam; the reporter constructs a story around “the snippit of video”; the story causes Mr. Blumenthal, then running for the U.S. Senate from his perch as Connecticut’s Attorney General, a bit of embarrassment, but he barricades himself from probing reporters, asserts he several times misspoke, and  survives “the snippet of video”; later the reporter, Mr. Hernandez,  is hired by a firm whose Vice President, Mr. Patru, was a campaign advisor to Linda McMahon, the millionaire. Coincidence? The imputation is that the hiring of Mr. Hernandez by Mr. Patru is a payback of some kind. In politics, as savvy reporters well know, there are no coincidences – unless the tangle of connections involves one of “our bums,” in which case we write a story that makes reference to a “snippit of video,” while failing to mention other snippits of video and news reports that show Mr. Blumenthal either saying or brashly intimating that he served as a marine in Vietnam.

Here is the “snippit of video” cited in the Courant story:

  

The story follows on the heels of multiple reports of a claim made by Tom Foley, a Republican Party gubernatorial wannabe, that Roy Occhigrosso, gyrating between his employment at Global Strategy and communications chief for Governor Dannel Malloy, may have crossed an ethical bar when the PR firm was awarded a Malloy connected contract. Mr. Foley had invited Connecticut’s media to look into a relationship he regarded as unsavory, if legal.

The Malloy-Global Strategy connection, it would appear from multiple editorials and commentary pieces in Connecticut, none of them favorable to Mr. Foley, may have been “a coincidence.” After all, political operatives constantly shuttle between newspapers, political organizations, educational institutions and high paying PR firms always happy to have in their employ politically connected fallen stars.

Such things happen all the time. Charlie Morse, the Courant’s chief political writer, left the paper, where he had for several years written glowing accounts of the sayings and doings of then Senator Lowell Weicker, to work on the Weicker campaign for governor; Michele Jacklin, who as chief political commentator at the Courant stepped into Mr. Morse’s empty shoes, left the paper to work on New Haven Mayor John DeStefano’s campaign.

Mr. Occhiogrosso floated from Global Strategy into the Malloy administration, then retreated to Global Strategy after two years of honorable service as the governor’s flack catcher. His company rewarded Mr. Occhiogrosso with a Vice Presidency, and even today, from his perch at Global Strategy, news reporters at the Courant continue to treat Mr. Occhiogrosso as if he were a paid communications director for the embattled governor. Shortly after Mr. Occhigrosso returned to Global Strategy, his company received a lucrative contract from the Malloy administration. Nothing to see here, please move on.

Happens all the time. Nothing to see here. Please move on.

Perhaps the best report on Mr. Blumenthal’s serial misstatements concerning his service in Vietnam came from Australia. The Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) featured Mr. Blumenthal as one of a few notable imposters in a documentary on stolen valor called “Heroes, Frauds and Imposters” (hit “play video” on the link provided here: ),” a documentary that puts Mr. Blumenthal’s misrepresentations in a proper context. That documentary, no snippit, will not be shown, it is safe to predict, anywhere in the state when the pretend Vietnam marine – like Mrs. McMahon, a Greenwich millionaire -- once again runs for office. 

The snippit averse Connecticut Commentary reported on Blumenthal’s manifest lies here.

And here.

And here.

And here 

And here.

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.       

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 . 

Malloy, a Utopian Twinkie?

To a certain degree, all utopianists are eternal optimists –Panglossian optimists. The world may be crumbling about them, but their lively imaginations lift them above the debris.

Realists will agree that the future does not seem sparkling for Europe just now. The latest news is that ALL of Europe, with the possible exception of stout Germany, has entered a second, double dip recession.

In Greece, Spain and perhaps Italy a depression has sunk its teeth into Europe’s soft underbelly. Greece, the home of democracy, bid democracy goodbye as it tumbled into a depression, overloaded with accumulative debt and unsustainable social programs. Euro-technocrats now direct its future. In Italy, Spain and perhaps France, the same stern number crunchers are waiting in the wings for the inevitable collapse of European Social Democracy.

Here in the United States, voters from sea to shining sea have just reelected as president the most progressive, European oriented chief executive in the country’s history. Mr. Obama has been steering the political ship of state in the direction of the European model for the past four years, at a time when Europe -- weighted down with, to mention only two straws breaking democracy’s back, an expensive universal health care system and unsustainable pensions -- appears ready to pitch over the cliff.

Not to worry. Forward!

Panglossian Connecticut marches forward with a ragged future at its elbow. Another day has been tucked into bed, and the state has received yet another “F” from yet another rating service; this one, Conning Inc., a Hartford-based asset manager that does financial research for insurers and institutional investors. Among all 50 states, the Conning report advises, Connecticut is dead last in credit quality.

The managing director of the company, Paul Mansour, writes that while Connecticut does not make most listings of states in fiscal stress,“… the reality is quite alarming. The state is among the worst in job creation, tax revenue growth, and has not yet seen a recovery in home prices. It has very high debt and retirement obligations, little budget flexibility and no rainy day fund balance.”

Job creation has been stagnant in Connecticut even since former Governor Lowell Weicker instituted his income tax to discharge a $2 billion deficit. In the blink of an eye, Connecticut’s government went on a spending spree, which ought to have convinced members of the General Assembly that the spending thigh bone is connected to the revenue shin bone in such a way that when revenues increase spending also increases. Connecticut’s current budget is about three times as large as the last pre-income tax budget presented to the legislature by former Governor Bill O’Neill. Larger state revenues, we now know from painful experience, do not translate into deficitless budgets. The current deficit – the size of which depends upon which political shyster one asks – has also kept pace with increasing revenues. After the Weicker income tax and the Malloy tax increase, the largest in state history, the state budget has reverted to the status quo ante in the pre-income tax days of O’Neill. This is the opposite of progress.
 

Once a magnet for business growth owing to its low taxes, budget hawking business-friendly General Assembly and modest regulatory environment, Connecticut has become an entrepreneurial pariah. The governor now bribes companies to remain in the state by offering to a preferred few a raft of crony capitalist inducements-- tax credits, low interest loans and free buildings -- on condition that the captive companies produce a set number of jobs within a predetermined time frame. 

Eyes outside the state are watching and taking note of Connecticut’s regression. Graduates from Connecticut’s very expensive institutions of higher learning are carrying their diplomas to more prosperous states. On holidays, our sons, nephews, nieces, brothers and sisters arrive “home” from the Carolinas, Texas or Florida. Made in Connecticut companies are fleeing high business costs for more profitable states, and even our plunderable millionaires are beginning to look over their shoulders at better prospects elsewhere. Since 1991, the state has not been negotiating with prospective businesses from a position of strength.

The utopianist, imprisoned in his own walnut shell and counting himself the king of infinite space, usually identifies “the state”with state government. They are entirely different entities. Having identified the state with the ruling satrapy he is pleased to serve, he takes the matter a step further and identifies the state with himself in the manner of the Sun King, Louis XlV, who famously said, “L’etate, c’est moi” (I AM the state).

Thus the governor’s acerbic mouthpiece and Malloyalist-in-chief Roy Occhiogrosso persists in arguing that “the state” is better off than it was before Malloy extracted from hard pressed Connecticut taxpayers the largest tax increase in state history.

Really? If a thief were to extract the gold from Mr. Occhiogrosso’s teeth, the thief might well argue that HE was better off after the tooth pulling. But it takes a special sort of preening arrogance for the thief to argue plausibly that Mr. Occhiogrosso had benefited from the extraction; and only a utopian robber far gone in conceit would argue that he is his robbery victim. Occhiogrosso to Malloy:“L’etate, c’est vous.”

Lawyers call improbable defenses of the kind urged by Occhiogrosso – “You’re better off” -- twinkie defenses. Speaking of Twinkies, the latest Connecticut company to throw in the white flag – after a dead-end negotiation with a greedy union – is Hostess of Wonder Bread and Twinkie fame. After the union induced shutdown, twinkies will be available only in the Malloy administration; when budget time rolls around, one may hope Mr. Malloy will have better luck with SEBAC than Hostess did with its unions.

Lawlor’s Law

 

The whole point and purpose of the Office of Victim Advocate (OVA) is, as the title suggests, victim advocacy. Any defense lawyer or reporter will tell you that advocacy hurts and involves incalculable risks to the advocate. Such is the case with the OVA, which can most accurately be described as an independent in-house whistleblower operation.

A number of people who showed up on a blustery afternoon outside the Wethersfield Department of Corrections (DOC) on October 16 to protest the immanent firing of Michelle Cruz, Connecticut’s Victim’s Advocate, had use of her services. One of them was Elizabeth Barrett, whose daughter was murdered four years ago. She was accompanied by her husband who, with his close cropped white beard, looked for all the world like Ernest Hemingway.

Mrs. Barrett stepped to the battery of microphones, leaned into them and said in a crisp voice, “Four and a half years ago, we were fortunate enough to meet Michelle Cruz, Connecticut’s Victim’s Advocate. She has sat with us at our meetings with police, advised us of our rights, explained the judicial system, and explained legal terms in a language we could understand. Her empathy and knowledge have been indispensable, which brings me to the reason I’m here today.”

The Malloyalist Propaganda Machine

After it had been pointed out that his drawings were hypercritical and highly unflattering representations of his subjects, a famous caricaturist responded,“What’s the point of having absolute power, if you are not prepared to abuse it?”

Roy Occhiogrosso, Governor Dannel Malloy’s Senior Advisor and a fierce Malloyalist, should have internalized the quote so that he would be able to flourish it when asked by reporters why the governor thought it necessary to recruit dozens of state officials as propaganda agents.

Malloy the Progressive

According to Public Policy Polling, Governor Dannel Malloy “continues to be one of the most unpopular Governors in the country in our polling.”

Mr. Malloy’s approval-disapproval spread likely astonished most political actors in the state, with the possible exception of the phlegmatic Roy Occhiogrosso, the governor chief flack catcher, whose response to a reputable, non-partisan poll showing the governor with an approval rating of a slender 33 percent and a disapproval rating of 51 percent was a barely suppressed yawn.

“We generally don’t comment on polls,” said Mr. Occhiogrosso, “because what’s there to say? Polls come and go, numbers go up and down. The governor always tries to do what he thinks is in the best interests of the people of Connecticut, irrespective of the political consequences.”

Politicians also come and go, and their comings and goings are sometimes intimately connected with sliding approval ratings.

On previous occasions, Mr. Malloy has said that he is uninterested in popularity contests. His principle business lies in re-inventing Connecticut; in this ambition, he has patterned his political program after that of President Barack Obama, who has been during his first term in office busily re-inventing America.

Actually, it may be the other way around. It is always difficult in these circumstances to determine precisely which came first, the chicken or the egg. In his second campaign for the presidency, Mr. Obama – slipping in the polls, but not quite as precipitously as Mr. Malloy – has begun to chatter about millionaires paying their “fair share”; in Mr. Obama’s view, a millionaire is anyone who earns by the sweat of his brow more than $250,000 per year, well short of a million. With the Damoclean sword of a $15 trillion deficit hanging over their heads, most non-millionaire taxpayers in the country are beginning to brace themselves for a massive tax increase.  Mr. Malloy, it will be recalled, is the father of the largest tax increase in Connecticut history, compared to which his spending cuts have been indeterminate and modest.

The similarities between Mr. Obama and Mr. Malloy are telling. Both are young, and it is said that Mr. Obama has some Irish blood rolling his veins.

Both are ardent travelers. According to a recent story, Mr. Malloy will be on his way to China sometime in September, there to explore the possibility of persuading his equivalent in China’s fascist government to invest in Connecticut. The Chinese already are heavily invested in the foundering U.S. economy. Mr. Malloy possibly has more miles on his pedometer than any other Connecticut governor and has shown himself to be – the views of Jonathan Pelto notwithstanding – a faithful progressive.         

Support for unions was one of the identifying characteristics of the 1912 presidential campaign involving trust buster and former Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, a convert to progressive causes, Republican President Howard Taft, a golfer whose real political ambitions would later be fulfilled when he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Democratic candidate and dilettante progressive Woodrow Wilson, and socialist candidate Eugene Debs, the real progressive deal. In the coming 2012 election, the United States will be reprising its 1912 counterpart, which some political scientists consider one of the most defining elections in U.S. History. The 1912 election, in which progressivism made its first and most lasting impression on American politics, introduced into the political mainstream the central tenants of a progressive program that reached its zenith during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt.

Mr. Roosevelt favored the unionization of private industry but drew a line in the sand concerning the unionization of government workers. Willing to help union workers obtain more of the profits they helped generate in the private sector, Mr. Roosevelt said “It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government,” because government workers do not generate profits; they negotiate for more tax money. A union strike against taxpayers, Mr. Roosevelt said, would be “unthinkable and intolerable.”

In Connecticut, government workers have become the pampered pets of politicians like Mr. Malloy and Speaker of the State House of Representatives Chris Dovovan, both of whom were quite willing to exclude from budget deliberations Republican leaders who had not yet bowed their necks to union demands. Indeed, the Democratic dominated General Assembly pre-approved a budget that later was substantially changed by Mr. Malloy negotiating in concert with the very same union bargainers Mr. Roosevelt thought should never have a claim on public money.

Ah well, it is the nature of progressivism to progress. Accordingly, Connecticut has witnessed in recent days it’s governor andattorney general marching in a picket line in support of union workers against nursing home administrators, sounding for all the world like Mr. Debs accusing greedy administrators of the Pullman Company of buying the favors of politicians. Not one commentator has yet accused SEBAC of purchasing the favors of Mr. Malloy and Attorney General George Jepsen through donations and in-kind contributions to their campaigns, the nightmare that haunted Mr. Roosevelt’s otherwise placid nights.      

Push Comes To Shove on Malloy’s Education Reform Bill

“The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood” -- Otto von Bismarck

Governor Dannel Malloy’s original education reform bill limited “the influence of unions and collective bargaining in a network of low-performing schools, to allow for more flexibility in turning them around,”according to one news report. The version of the amended bill extruded by the General Assembly’s education committee leaves intact union decision making power in those schools targeted for improvement.

Executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents Joseph Cirasuolo characterized the legislative revision of the Malloy bill as removing from Mr. Malloy’s education commissioner the authority needed “if we are going to make a difference in these schools." The revised bill, Mr. Cirasuolo said, mandates such extensive negotiation with teacher unions in schools needing reform that the bill “could, block a turnaround strategy.”

Reform advocates such as chief executive officer of ConnCAN Patrick Riccards characterized the legislative revision as reactionary and destructive of reform. The revised bill, Mr. Riccards said, is “a major step back” that deprives the commissioner of education of the power and authority necessary to turn around low performing schools. Speculating on the intent of the revised committee bill, a member of a New Haven group advocating reform said, “It's almost written as if one is trying to coax out a veto from the governor. For those who thought the second version is a major step back, this is yet another major step back."

It was German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck who compared the manufacture of laws in a parliamentary system with the production of sausage, never a pretty sight. “Laws are like sausages,” Bismarck said, “it is better not to see them being made.” And the same Iron Chancellor cautioned, “Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.”

The denial that Mr. Malloy’s original bill had been effectively eviscerated and rendered bloodless by union cronies in the General Assembly fell to Malloy factotum Roy Occhiogrosso, who wrote in an e-mail to Connecticut’s media that the bill was “a work in progress,” sausage in the making. It would be more truthful to say that Democratic committee members within the union bought General Assembly now have refashioned Mr. Malloy’s original bill into to the legislative equivalent of a zombie.

As was the case with Mr. Malloy’s first budget, the sausage making process is proceeding merrily along behind closed doors, and the final product will have no Republican fingerprints on it. Within Connecticut’s one party government, the new opposition party is made up of General Assembly Democrats yoked to union interests. All the important bill shaping negotiations are occurring behind closed doors, and very little information concerning the secret negotiations between Malloy administration officials and General Assembly members negotiating on behalf of powerful teacher unions has seeped through the locked and bolted chamber.

"Yes, for now,” Mr. Occhiogrosso told reporters, “the people in the room have agreed to keep the details of those conversations in the room — because that's really the only way you can negotiate. But we continue to take into account the views and concerns of all key stakeholders," provided the stakeholders are not taxpaying constituents of Republican Party members in the legislature.

Mr. Malloy’s spine is not exactly a limp noodle; there is an abundance of blood and iron there. Mr. Malloy appears for the moment to be fiercely committed to those features of his plan without which the reform of failing public schools in the network of schools targeted for improvement would be impossible. The union connected stakeholders in Mr. Occhiogrosso’s backroom intend to decouple tenure and performance evaluations from employment, and the extra money – Where will it come from? – the governor proposes to spend on failing public schools sets their legs a’ tingling.

If Mr. Malloy is adamant that the essential reform features of his initial plan should be preserved in a final bill, he will at some point during the sausage making ordeal need legislative reinforcement from precisely those Republicans he has consistently spurned in budget negotiations. The doors of democracy will then spring open. Whether or not Republicans will rush through to assist Mr. Malloy in his struggle against special interests to advance the public good is, at this point, an open question.

Progressive Educational Reform

Governor Dannel Malloy is attempting valiantly to upgrade Connecticut’s ancient union encrusted educational establishment. Naturally, he ran into problems with those in the state who defend the status quo, Connecticut’s powerful teacher’s union among them. In a politics of narrow interests, settled opinion is king, because those who have secured their interests, sometimes at the expense of the general good, are understandably reluctant to surrender the golden favors showered upon them by a bought government. God help the man who unsettles settled opinion.

Mr. Malloy has proposed to attach teacher tenure to measurable performance, according to Zach Janowski. As in most businesses, including the sports arena, those who do not measure up will be let go. Among those ardently defending the status quo is once radical Big Thinker Jonathan Pelto, whose associations with teacher unions are warm and cordial. These days, whenever Mr. Pelto attempts to throw his two cents into the conversational ring, he is vigorously assaulted by one or another fervid Malloyalist.

Most recently, gubernatorial Senior Advisor Roy Occhigrosso, dubbed by humorist Colin McEnroe “The Hammer”, took off after the inoffensive Mr. Pelto following a critical piece Mr. Pelto had written on his blog, “Wait, What?” Concerning one of Mr. Pelto’s recent productions, Mr. Occhiogrosso responded, “Jonathan’s screeds have become increasingly delusional as time has gone on. He’s an unstable individual, who’s bitter that he didn’t land a job in the Administration. Although I’m hard pressed to see why anyone would hire him to do anything, he does describe himself as a ‘consultant.’ Is someone paying him to peddle information that’s not true?” One detects in Mr. Occhigrosso’s snake spittle the venom of a competitor. Mr. Pelto and his “screeds” have been rattling around in Democratic politics for about thirty years, during which time he has managed to sound like the choral leader of the Chorus of Crying State Unions (CCSU). But if during this time he had exhibited signs of instability, delusion and bitterness, someone other than Mr. Occhiogrosso would have noticed and perhaps had him committed, as Mr. Occhiogrosso evidently is, to the Malloy administration.

Upon joining the Malloy administration as a senior adviser, Mr. Occhiogrosso resigned as partner in charge of the Hartford office of the Global Strategy Group, a national polling and communication strategy group with a stable of political, corporate and non-profit clients.

Mr. McEnroe, unfailingly effervescent, noted that while Mr. Occhiogrosso’s boss, Mr. Malloy, was “an edgy guy himself… Occhiogrosso — and I say this with love — is proof of the maxim that when you're holding a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Roy isn't holding a hammer. He is one. It's as if Newt Gingrich went looking for someone to soften his angry, aggressive side and hired Bill O'Reilly.”

Oddly enough, Mr. Pelto and Mr. Occhigrosso started their political lives on the same side of the progressive barricade. In one of his earlier incarnations, Mr. Occhiogrosso was associated with a UConn Health Center union. His ideological nursemaid was Leo Canty, the Second Vice President of the American Federation of Teachers in Connecticut and a member of AFT Local 3837, University Health Professionals. Mr. Canty, also the Vice President of the Hartford Labor Council, described himself in his campaign literature when he ran for state Representative in the 15th district as “a strong progressive politics activist.”

The real difference between Mr. Pelto and Mr. Occhiogrosso lies in who rather than what they serve. The cleavage apparent between them turns on two questions: Should tenure be used to protect incompetence, and to what extent should some of the functions of public education be privatized?

The partial privatization of a sclerotic public education fiefdom is the great bugaboo of those who would preserve the status quo, however harmful its effects on the public good. In this regard, Mr. Pelto is determined that no progress in this direction should be made. Mr. Occhiogrosso and Mr. Malloy presently appear undecided how they may best exploit the possibility of a partial, carefully controlled privatization of the public education behemoth. Teacher tenure appears to be on the ropes, but Connecticut’s powerful teacher unions have friends inside important General Assembly committees. In the past, it may be recalled, unions have been adept at rope-a-dope feints and surprising recoveries.

David Faces Goliath

In any public scuffle between a lowly lawyer and the Malloy administration, one would ordinarily cast the lawyer in the role of David, slingshot at the ready.

But in this case, Rich Rochlin – who, we are told, toiled in obscurity until he, a bit like David, bumped into Goliath – has some physical characteristics that one of Malloy’s men, the formidable Roy Occhiogrosso, finds amusing.

Mr. Occhiogrosso, who during his long and eventful career toiled more or less in obscurity before he joined forces with Goliath, does not hold back. An aide to Mr. Malloy has attributed to Mr. Occhiogrosso a remark that Mr. Rochlin “seems not to be playing with a full deck.''

In one scene recorded for posterity by journalistic embed Ted Mann, an able reporter for the Hearst chain of newspapers, Tim Bannon, Mr. Malloy’s Chief of Staff, receives from Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo’s chief aide a salty response to Mr. Malloy’s persistent criticism of Mr. Cuomo: “We operate on two speeds here: Get along, and kill." Mr. Occhiogrosso seems to have internalized the aide’s operative principle:

“The guy is everybody’s worst impression of a lawyer,’’ Occhiogrosso said of Mr. Rochlin. “He’s like a cartoon character. Hopefully, this guy’s 15 minutes of fame are up soon. … There are several pieces of silverware missing from the drawer. As to what happens to Rich Rochlin, hopefully he just goes away. He’s achieved his objective. This has been a fairly unusual and odd marketing campaign. We’re done dealing with him.’’

Mr. Roachlin is representing a handful of state workers vilified in the media for having allegedly – an investigation is underway – fraudulently applied for a federal handout following Connecticut’s freak snow storm in November.

Mr. Roachlin has been described in some media accounts as “a colorful character with a beard,” a “hard-charging lawyer who has hurled rhetorical bombs at Malloy and his aides in an unorthodox style that included showing up at Malloy’s press conference,” a “newcomer to politics,” unlike Mr. Occhiogrosso, also a colorful character who began his long and eventful career politics and a union “go-fer” tutored by Leo Canty, the union impresario still battling, after all these years, Connecticut’s governmental Goliath.

Mr. Roachlin has been characterized by Mr. Occhiogrosso current boss, the media shy Governor Dannel Goliath, as “a $250-per-hour lawyer who would say whatever was necessary to help his clients,” somewhat like Andrew McDonald, the governor’s current Legal Counsel or Michael Lawlor, the governor’s Under Secretary for Criminal Justice Policy and Planning, both of whom are gold plated lawyers. Mr. Malloy also has a law degree.

Much to his credit, Mr. Occhiogrosso has been spared the indignity of attending law school or representing clients before the bar. When Mr. Occhiogrosso needs to lawyer-up, he hires one.

Chris Keating, a Hartford Courant reporter and one of its best diggers, disclosed in his report that Mr. Occhiogrosso had once hired the “cartoon character” to represent him in a legal dispute Mr. Occhiogrosso had with a contractor who, given Mr. Occhiogrosso operational principles, one hopes is still alive.

Mr. Roachlin, enjoying his 15 minutes of fame, has returned Mr. Occhiogrosso’s fire:

“Roy is on my marketing team. He keeps extending my 15 minutes by 10 minutes every night. I thought he was a pro, but he’s getting schooled by a novice, so I feel for him. I thought this guy was a pro. This is amateur hour. It’s like he just came out of an online school for communications. How pathetic. If he needs advice on how to personally attack me, he has my number. He’s keeping me in the news. I thank him for that. … He’s making all the classic mistakes. My clients’ story is getting out. The governor’s administration is being exposed as incompetent. The governor won’t look at the evidence, so we have to keep talking about it.’’

The out-take message for Goliath might very well be: Don’t sweat the small stuff; save the howitzers for the big guys.

All The Governor’s Men

Jon Lender, investigative reporter for the Hartford Courant, examines some savory or unsavory – depending on one’s point of view -- connections between the Malloy administration and Northeast Utilities:

“For several years ending last December, Global's Hartford office was run by Occhiogrosso. Then, when Occhiogrosso quit to take his current job in the governor's office, Global hired an NU communications executive, Tanya Meck, to take his place in Hartford.

“What significance is there in this interlock of personnel, politics, consultants and clients? According to Occhiogrosso, none.

"’It doesn't mean anything,’ he said. ‘It's a big company in a small state — doesn't mean anything.’"

Another Pig, Another Poke

Duane Billington, a retired engineering technician and civic activist from Naples, “fought for 18 months against Jackson Laboratory's plan to expand in Florida,” according to a story in the Hartford Courant.”

Ultimately Mr. Billington was successful. Jackson Laboratory pulled up their negotiating stakes in Florida.

Governor Dannel Malloy’s chief of staff, Roy Occhiogrosso, read about the failed attempt to pitch the deal to Florida in a newspaper, evidentially shared the information with his boss, and a contingent from Connecticut was sent to Bar Harbor Maine to negotiate a deal with Jackson Laboratory administrators. The Courant story does not mention the names of members of the Connecticut contingent sent to negotiate with Jackson. The deal apparently was consummated and a letter of intent was signed between the parties.

When two members of the General Assembly, Senator Len Suzio and Senate Republican leader Leonard Fasano, asked to see the memorandum of understanding between the state and Jackson, they were sternly rebuffed. Malloy officials asserted the documents contained trade secrets that could not be disclosed to members of the General Assembly who would be asked to provide funding for the deal. The same claim was made in Florida, an overreach that some say soured the state on the deal.

Suzio has scoffed at the transparent dodge.

“I've got a business guy here who fell off his chair laughing,'' Suzio said of a colleague's reaction about trade secrets. “Why would there be any confidential information in a letter of intent? We're not asking for the disclosure of secret formulas. It's laughable.''

Many of Suzio’s questions were bridges too far; Mr. Malloy’s aggressive administration very early acquired the habit of pushing things through with minor participation on the part of the people’s representatives. Republicans in the General Assembly were simply pushed out of the way during budget negotiations.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Malloy administration has to some extent been trying to sell the Democratic dominated General Assembly a pig in a poke. The Malloy-Jackson deal, according to the Courant story, “is scheduled to come to a vote Wednesday in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Malloy is calling for the state to borrow $291 million to construct a new building on 17 acres of state-owned land at the University of Connecticut Health Center campus in Farmington and provide $99 million in research money for Jackson. The nonprofit institute is pledging to create 300 jobs within 10 years and 600 jobs within 20 years, making it slightly larger than the Florida plan in jobs and state subsidies.”

Mr. Billington certainly is not shy of reporters.

"They couldn't find a home here in Collier County or Sarasota because they don't have a product to deliver,'' Mr. Billington told a reporter. “Their business is to produce genetically altered mice for other scientists to study and use in experiments. This thing they're going into is a totally new deal for them. They have no expertise. It's an exercise in venture capitalism. It could work, and it might not.''

Jackson Laboratory has had success in genetically altering mice sold to prospective buyers in other research facilities. The Connecticut operation would break new and untested ground for Jackson, which now is seeking to move into an entirely different field, that of genomic medicine, the study of genes and genetic interactions that, according to a 26-page brochure that was distributed to Connecticut legislators, are "essential to creating new medicines and treatments for some of humankind's worst diseases and conditions.''

Mr. Billington told the Courant reporter, “We're glad to be rid of them. I feel bad for the state of Connecticut if you all have politicians who are swallowing the Jackson line hook, line and sinker.”

This is the second time the Malloy administration has asked the Democratic dominated General Assembly to swallow an unpalatable deal. Asked to vote on a budget the details of which had not been finalized in negotiations between Malloy administration officials and SEBAC, a union coalition authorized to negotiate contracts, Democratic leaders in the General Assembly persuaded their caucus to vote in favor of an unfinished budget. The leaders of the Democratic caucus, President of the Senate Don Williams and Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, apparently like the taste of hooks and lines and sinkers.

Mr. Donovan, SEBAC’s best friend in the legislature, is running for the U .S. Congress in Connecticut’s 5th District.

Since the Malloy administration enjoys an insuperable majority in the General Assembly, it does not need Republican votes to pass measures the details of which have not been adequately ventilated in public. Calls on the part of Republicans to put off the vote Wednesday until the pig in the poke – minus the trade secrets, which always may be redacted in publically disclosed documents – has been put on public view and debated fully by the General Assembly will no doubt be ignored by the Malloy administration. And the deal will go down on Wednesday, possibly with the concurrence of some Republicans in the General Assembly who have acquired a taste for hooks, lines and sinkers.

All the “buts” will not arrive until much later.

Mike Hyde, Jackson’s Vice President and fund raiser, no longer concerns himself with Mr. Billington's criticisms. "I'm delighted to be in Connecticut,” he has said. “It's a great state. I really don't have any hard feelings about what happened in Florida. This is here. This is now.”

Florida rejected Jackson’s best offer because the state is flat on its back and broke, unlike Connecticut. For now, at least, the state is flush in quickly disappearing funds owing mostly to the largest tax increase in its history imposed upon it by its “shared sacrifice” governor. This is here. This is now.

And the future? Let the future eat cake.