Life After Politics

Former Connecticut U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman has shown that there is life after politics.

The usual route for departing Beltway politicians is to associate themselves with a large law firm in some lobbying or quasi-lobbying capacity, thereby softening for the clients of the firm the burdensome laws and regulations they had so assiduously created as congressman.

Former U.S. Senator Chis Dodd managed to escape the mold somewhat when, after having left the Congress, he hitched his star to Hollywood. The author of the imponderable Dodd-Frank bill, so compendious that we still don’t know “what’s in it,” to borrow a phrase from Mr. Dodd’s compatriot in Congress, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Dodd is now busily engaged in attempting to convince his former associates to do something – anything! – about Chinese violations of U.S. copyright laws. Since former President Richard Nixon first touched glasses with mass murderer Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1972, the Chinese have busied themselves by stealing American technology and hacking into pretty much any business in the United States that may survive the Dodd-Frank boa constrictor.

Mr. Lieberman’s route is the more traditional one. After bidding goodbye to a Senate that has over the years become much less civil than it was when Mr. Lieberman first entered it from his position as Attorney General of Connecticut, a pathway also followed by U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, Mr. Lieberman has added his senatorial luster to Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman, a firm that has in it 365 attorneys nationwide and is ranked 120 on the The National Law Journal's annual headcount survey.

Mr. Lieberman who, according to The Legal Times blog,  joined the firm as special council focusing on internal investigations and regulatory policy, has carried along with him Clarine Nardi Riddle,  who has joined the same firm as counsel and will lead its government affairs practice. Ms. Riddle served as a Judge of the Connecticut Superior Court, Connecticut’s trial court of general jurisdiction, where she presided over cases involving criminal, foreclosure, zoning, juvenile, and residential and commercial housing matters. Ms. Riddle was also an Attorney General in Connecticut from 1989 to 1991 and has been for many years Chief of Staff for former Senator Lieberman. She co-founded No Labels, an organization of Democrats, Republicans and Independents devoted to breaking partisan gridlock in Washington DC. Mr. Lieberman, denied the Democratic nomination of his state party for the U.S. Senate in 2006, handily defeated his challenger Ned Lamont in the general election and rejoined the Senate as an Independent. Mr. Lieberman announced his resignation at the end of his term. He was succeeded by Chris Murphy, who has shown himself to be much more progressive and far more partisan than Mr. Lieberman.

Not that progressive Democrats in Connecticut have much to worry about; the Republican Party in the state has been effectively marginalized and the state’s left of center media tends to make a fuss only when one of its own prized concerns is roughed up in the back ally of Democratic partisan politics.

Freedom of information appears to have taken a hit recently; in the absence of effective Republican oversight in the General Assembly, some few legislative rats infested last-minute General Assembly bills; in a frantic effort to balance a chronically out of balanced budget fashioned in the partisan smithy of the Governor Dannel Malloy SEBAC combine, the General Assembly has legalized Keno, causing one left of center commentator to comment caustically: “We're all used to what they laughably call a process: Any time they want to do something repugnant, they blow off their rule book, slam the door on anyone who might fuss and pass some abomination before it can get press coverage. The Republican minority, most of the time, is an agreeable Vichy regime.”

But these are easily ignored inconvenient and temporary eruptions. No one within the one party state is much interested in backward looking grumblers who may impede the forward inevitable march of history. Bill Buckley’s war whoop that it is the business of lovers of liberty to stand athwart history shouting “Stop” is but a distant  memory. Without a permanent and vigorous opposition, the present regime will continue to map Connecticut’s future. Onward to Utopia!   

What Republicans Can Do

Nationally, most Republican election analysts called it wrong. Moments following the election,Dick Morris repented in sackcloth and ashes. He had missed something that one might call the New Democratic Majority, which is on the order of missing Gibraltar while sailing the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula:
 

“By the time you finish with the various demographic groups the Democrats win, you almost have a majority in their corner. Count them: Blacks cast 13% of the vote and Obama won them 12-1. Latinos cast 10% and Obama carried them by 7-3. Under 30 voters cast 19% of the vote and Obama swept them by 12-7. Single white women cast 18% of the total vote and Obama won them by 12-6. There is some overlap among these groups, of course, but without allowing for any, Obama won 43-17 before the first married white woman or man over 30 cast their vote. (Lets guess that if we eliminate duplication, the Obama margin would be 35-13) Having conceded these votes, Romney would have had to win over two-thirds of the rest of the vote to win. He almost did. But not quite.”

Behold the New Democratic Majority – Blacks, Latinos, voters under 30 and single white women allured by Obama’s promise of a Planned Parenthood abortion center in every pot.

Sean Trende’s analysis in Real Clear Politics is much different than Morse’s. Trende does not deny the importance of capturing neglected minorities but, he points out, Romney’s challenge suffered most from a lack of white voters.

The imminent arrival of what Republicans used to call, a note of disapproval in their tone, the Nanny State -- a federal government octopus that wipes every tear with dollars taken from the idle rich while directing the flow of business in what has been quaintly called the private economy -- is supposed to hold this alliance together.

Parts of the alliance will fall away as the country limps along on crutches that date from the election of 1912, the high tide of the Progressive assault on common sense and the entrepreneurial spirit of the country. One likes to think that the powers of resistance of the average American to warmed over socialist schemes floating in the brain of Eugene Debs will survive the next four years in good repair; we are not Venezuela yet, even though Hugo Chavez, along with the progressive President of Russia Vladimir Putin, has given the thumbs up to Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, all promoters of the New Democratic Majority. The New Democratic Majority has been forged in the crucible of Chicago politics. Whether all or some of its component parts will survive after Mr. Obama and Mr. Axelrod leave the scene is very much an open question.

On the home front, Connecticut, far more than the national government, has become a one-party state. The template for the one party state may be found both in Venezuela and Connecticut’s major cities, Bridgeport serving as the state’s Ohio. As Connecticut’s major cities go, so goes the state.

Polls show that Dannel Malloy, the first Democratic governor in Connecticut since the administration of former Governor William O’Neill and the architect of the largest tax increase in state history, remains unpopular. However, voters who prefer an“Anyone but Malloy” candidate in 2014 may be looking at a “No Exit” sign. The governor has put together his own “New Connecticut Democratic Majority.” And the way in which his last budget was passed leaves little room for doubt that Mr. Malloy can cobble together a tax and spending plan without including the state’s Republican minority in the General Assembly. The architects of Connecticut’s last budget were Malloy and his Malloyalists, a Democratic majority in the General Assembly that pre-approved Mr. Malloy’s first budget and then invested the governor with plenipotentiary powers to readjust it, and state unions, dubbed by this writer at the time as Connecticut’s “third political party.”

Connecticut Democrats need surpluses to keep tax consumers well fed and to convince those unfamiliar with the way economies actually perform in the real world that the governor can easily create jobs by giving away millions in tax dollars to large profitable companies adept at crony capitalist bribery.

The jobs Mr. Malloy has claimed to produce in Connecticut do not grow on a jobs tree in the governor’s mansion adjacent to the money tree from which the governor, the Malloyalists and Democratic progressives in the state legislature pluck their millions to support grateful crony capitalists. Every dollar consumed in Connecticut taxes is a bucket of water taken from the deep end of the pool and poured into the shallow end by political shysters who hope to convince a majority of voters that the operation will increase the net amount of water in the pool, thus opening the door to unparalleled prosperity.

The surpluses Democrats will need to perpetuate this political fraud must come from somewhere, and taxpayers in Connecticut, already saddled with the largest tax increase in state history, cannot afford further increases – which means Mr. Malloy and the Democrats will do one of two things come budget time: either slash spending deeply, not likely, or pass on the tax burden to municipalities by cutting state support.

The loyal opposition in the General Assembly should begin soon to confront the imposture. They have only their chains to lose, and a world to win.

Fishwrap For July

Russians Mull Burying Soviet Leader Lenin

The corpse if V.I. Lenin has been awaiting burial since the Soviet Union was thrown on the ash heap of history during the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

Comments by Russia’s new culture minister suggest, according to a report in the Washington Times, that Mr. Lenin is, finally, on his way out:

“But recent comments by Russia’s new culture minister have brought closer the possibility that the father of the Bolshevik Revolution could finally be laid to rest, signaling an end to the cult of Lenin.

“’Many things in our life would symbolically change for the better after this [burial],’ Mr. Medinskysaid, adding that he thinks Lenin should be buried with full state honors and his Red Square mausoleum turned into a museum of the Sovietera.”

Nancy Pelosi Rakes In The Dough

Borrowing a page from the 1912 election featuring socialist Eugene Debs on the far left, William Howard Taft in the center, Woodrow Wilson at left of center and Bull Moose candidate Teddy Roosevelt, the archangel of progressivism, Democrats this year have chosen to belabor Wall Street -- not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The boiler-plate assaults by President Barack Obama, in full campaign mode for the past three years, and former Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi have been typical.

Unfortunately, financial disclosure statements are readily available; and Mrs. Pelosi’s statement shows she has been priming the outsourcing pump she has condemned from sea to shining sea, according to theDaily Caller:

“According to Pelosi’s 2011 financial disclosure statement, the Democratic House Minority Leader received between $1 million and $5 million in partnership income from ‘Matthews International Capital Management LLC,’ a group that emphasizes that it has a ‘A Singular Focus on Investing in Asia.’ A quick trip to the company website reveals a featured post extolling the virtues of outsourcing.”

When the Pullman’s strike was finally put down and a combine of Big Business, Big Government and Big Union ( represented by Samuel Gompers) finally destroyed Deb’s railroad union, the unflinching Debs refused ever again to ride in a Pullman car.

If the Democrats this year wish seriously to embrace progressivism, they must dress in sackcloth and ashes and refrain from decking themselves out in Wall Street baubles.

Obama A No Show At NAACP Convention Disappoints Some, But Not Malloy

At the NAACP Convention, Governor Dannel Malloy of Connecticut was honored for having played a major role in abolishing thestate’s death penalty. As he was acknowledging the plaudits, Mr. Malloy took a swipe at Texas Governor Rock Perry, a no-show at the convention.

But Perry was not the only MIA politician, according to anaccount in Buzzfeed:

“Convention organizers said the president's office cited a‘scheduling conflict’ as the reason he couldn't attend. (Obama spent today in Washington D.C., and has no major public events.) And the president did make an effort to ensure the convention that he hadn't forgotten them, appearing in a brief, pre-taped video praising the organization that aired before Biden's address.”

The Progressive Calls Dodd Loathsome, Depraved

The Progressive magazine was hatched in 1909 by Mr. Progressive himself, Senator Robert M. La Follette Sr. of Wisconsin, the founder of La Follette’s Weekly, renamed in 1929 The Progressive.

It’s current issue takes aim at despicable lobbyists and finds former senator Chris Dodd, now a Hollywood mogul, abhorrent. Dodd is rated as the 9^th most depraved lobbyist money can buy:

“The former Connecticut Senator, and internationally renowned eyebrow-haver, isn’t the most prodigious scum in the Beltway swamp, but he may be the most hypocritical. When asked in 2010 what would follow his thirty-year legislative career, which ended amid financial scandal, Dodd bluntly said, “No lobbying, no lobbying.” He then promptly became, as The Hill put it, “Hollywood’s leading man in Washington, taking the most prestigious job on K Street,” as chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America. The gig comes with a $1.2 million annual salary, and complimentary tickets to the Academy Awards.

“Dodd’s most public, and ultimately ill-fated, advocacy was in pushing two potentially disastrous bills: the Stop Online Piracy Act, and its Senate counterpart, Protect IP Act—both of which would’ve given the federal government the right to shut down any website that was merely being accused of copyright infringement.”

Government Without Firewalls

Both Republican governors John Rowland and Jodi Rell used to refer to themselves as “firewalls,” usually after they had compromised with Democratic leaders in the General Assembly to pass budgets that present Governor Dannel Malloy has often characterized as bags of tricks and treats. Mr. Malloy has insisted that his budget, still being hammered out by his agents and representatives of unions, is, on the other hand, transparent and honest-- a good thing. No tricks or treats there. No smoke, no mirrors, the sort of budget one might expect from a governor wearing a white hat who is not the plaything of special interests.

The firewall disappeared altogether after Mr. Malloy became governor. The Rell-Rowland firewall was not fireproof. Had it been so, Connecticut’s bottom budget line could not have tripled within the space of three governors, and the state would not now rank first in the nation in per capita debt. It would not be losing jobs to New Jersey and New York and Massachusetts. And, of course, Mr. Malloy would not have been faced, coming into office, with a budget deficit larger than that accosting Maverick Governor Lowell Weicker in 1991, which deficit Mr. Weicker resolved by instituting his income tax.

During his campaign for governor, Mr. Weicker used a fiery metaphor to signal to voters that he would not institute an income tax should they elect him governor – because an income tax would be like pouring gas on a fire. And we all know what happens when gas is poured on a fire.

Poof! Allow Democrats in the General Assembly to run an income tax pipeline into the wallets of Connecticut’s long suffering taxpayers and, before you can cry fire in the crowded theatre, the roof of state government will be aflame with extravagant spending. Such was Mr. Weicker dire electioneering warning. And, as it turns out, he was right.

Then came the firewall governors who were not firewalls, the budget compromises between Republican governors and dominant Democrats in the General Assembly and, finally, Mr. Malloy, riding a white horse and calling for “shared sacrifice.”

In the age of YouTube, it has been possible for the Republican resistance in the General Assembly to post a string of embarrassing claims made by Mr. Malloy in the heat of a primary and general election campaign that rivals claims made by Mr. Weicker in that long ago campaign when budget deficits were about one third of what they are presently in the age of Connecticut’s new one party state.



Taxes in the Malloy budget have been raised $1.8 billion, so far. There were no negotiations between Mr. Malloy and taxpayers before Mr. Malloy demanded a “shared sacrifice” of them; though Mr. Malloy was kind enough to present to them his non-negotiable demands at no fewer than 17 Town Hall meetings. And now, Mr. Malloy, striving to tuck the budget to bed before the legislative clock runs out, but finding himself yet in negotiations with unions months after agents of Mr. Malloy first sat down at the table with union hard bargainers, has announced, on a holiday weekend, that $320 million of the nearly $1 billion surplus Mr. Malloy and Democratic leaders had smuggled into their budget, ostensibly to refill the state’s depleted rainy day fund, will be shared with -- unions, reducing the “shared sacrifice” of those who were largely responsible for his re-election.

Naturally, Republicans in the General Assembly, who played no part in Mr. Malloy non-negotiable Plan A, protested somewhat heatedly. Republican House leader Larry Cafero stormed, "The Friday night dump. Is that what it's called? This is the dump of all dumps. Friday night, holiday weekend. ... He [Mr. Malloy] drops the $400 million backfill plan… He uses $320 million of the surplus to make up $400 million in cuts -- $320 million! Classic Malloy. He says one thing, he does the other. Says one thing, does the other.”

And Republicans can be expected to crank out more YouTube clips that might possibly be of use in future campaigns against Democratic legislators – because the Republican Party, which was not permitted to invest in Mr. Malloy’s budget, is not, partly owing to role of agitator and chief Democratic Party scold played by outgoing party chairman Chris Healy, the sleepy, go-along-to-get-along party of yesteryear forced to make do with Democratic budgets winked at by Republican governors.

By any measure of sound economic health Democrats may point to, Connecticut, attached to a breathing tube, is lying stretched out on a gurney in the ER. State Democrats seems to be following the template set by President Barack Obama, Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Senate President Harry Read at a time when Democrats enjoyed a veto proof majority in the congress: Never let a crisis go to waste without punishing your political enemies and rewarding your friends.

However, given the condition of the patient, state Democrats likely will have a heck of a time explaining to relatives of the stricken state why they are busying themselves passing budgets and laws that punish entrepreneurial capital, pander to unions, and pad with a surplus a state debt three times larger than the last $7.5 billion pre-income tax budget of former Democratic Governor William O’Neill.

While the state, now lacking any firewall, crumbles in flames, its inmates are forcing through the Democratic dominated legislature hastily written, defective bills abolishing the death penalty, facilitating transgenderism, larding with hidden taxes bills paid by energy consumers, arranging yet another muli-million dollar bail-out of the tax draining UConn Health Center, and collecting surplus money from hard pressed businesses and taxpayers to relieve unions of a good portion the “shared sacrifice” Mr. Malloy once sternly demanded of them, all of it making a queer sort of suicidal sense.

The great Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said that given the choice of immediate execution or of being slowly trampled to death by geese, he would prefer a quick finish. The people of Connecticut soon will be faced with the same choice.

bin Laden At Room Temperature

Here is former Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi on the importance AND insignificance of the late Osama bin Laden:

Then, September 7, 2006: “[E]ven if [Osama bin Laden] is caught tomorrow, it is five years too late. He has done more damage the longer he has been out there. But, in fact, the damage that he has done ... is done. And even to capture him now I don't think makes us any safer.”

Now: “The death of Osama bin Laden marks the most significant development in our fight against al-Qaida. ... I salute President Obama, his national security team, Director Panetta, our men and women in the intelligence community and military, and other nations who supported this effort for their leadership in achieving this major accomplishment. ... [T]he death of Osama bin Laden is historic…”

Note the use of the word “historic.” Anything that happened yesterday is historic. This overused locution parallels the word “interesting” in modern times.

If your wife or GF, having dyed her hair blue with bright streaks of orange and yellow, asks you “What do you think of my hair do?” you are expected to show sufficient enthusiasm. In a pinch, you might mutter “Interesting,” but generally this will be regarded by your wife or GF as a failure of nerve, and you may expect the usual dressing down.

In using the word “historic,” a vacuous emotional place holder, Mrs. Pelosi was simply following political protocol: One of her aides had shoved a statement under her nose; she read it. We should not be too hard on her.

The truth is that, operationally, Mr. bin Laden was and is dispensable. He had outlived his usefulness. The occasional grainy videos had become… well, interesting.

The news media is now fluttering around the question: HOW was Mr. bin Laden dispatched.

Early propaganda from the White House had Mr. bin Laden cowering behind the skirts of his wife or possibly armed with a knife in his teeth or fingering a grenade in his pocket. The brave woman stepped forward; she was shot in the leg. Mr. bin Laden took a bullet above one of his eyes, creating a “gruesome” gash that has itself become problematic. Pictures were taken, apparently to convince terrorist doubters that the right man had been sent heavenward by Navy Seals.

It turns out that some of this was bunkum. Mr. bin Laden was unarmed. In the confusion of the moment, he had failed to raise his hands in surrender. Had he done so, his life would have been spared. Possibly he might have been transported to the United States and given a civil trial, as recommended by presidential campaigner Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, now a Hollywood lobbyist, and other Democrats who, at the time, favored wrapping terrorists in the rights and immunities available under the U.S. Constitution to non-terrorists citizens of the USA.

Among the people gathered at the White House watching the assault on the millionaire’s well fortified compound, a hand grenade’s throw from one of the principal military institutions in Pakistan, was the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, et al. Mr. Dodd was addressing the Media Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based think tank and didn’t make the showing as a Hollywood guest. The group was watching the historic event IN REAL TIME, which means they likely saw Mr. bin Laden stubbornly refusing to surrender.

And yet, the news-shapers at the White House still got it wrong.

The gruesome gash left by that bullet hole in the forehead presents yet another problem.

Pictures of Mr. bin Laden after he had been assassinated had been taken. One shows Mr. bin Laden being deposited in the ocean. In deference to Islamic burial rites, the body was washed and wrapped in a shroud before being fed to the fishes. It appears that burial at sea was a faux pas; according to some Islamic scholars, the body should have been properly interred or delivered to a relative who might have accepted it. Another picture showing Mr. bin Laden’s facial wound is said to be GRUSEOME.

Should the pictures be released or not?

The United States has not developed a protocol concerning the publication of gruesome assassination pictures.

Perhaps Ms. Pelosi might be urged to venture her unscripted opinion on the matter.

Après Rell

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fini.

The Endorsements

There have been very few unexpected endorsements from Connecticut’s media, and the almost universal endorsements of Attorney General Richard Blumenthal by the state’s opinion makers were entirely predictable. The status quo media likes status quo candidates.

The status quo candidate will always stress his experience over that of his opponent who, of course, may have little direct experience in politics. Such was the case with Ann Brickley, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate running against Sen. John Larson, a Beltway familiar. The proposition that voters should choose experience in office over inexperience is, of course, fatal to good government. The very existence of an election process argues against cradle to grave politicians. But the settled opinion among many editorial writers in the state is that political experience should be determinative.

For this reason it was a little unsettling, in a positive sense, to read the Register Citizen’s endorsement of Brickley over Larson. The paper reasoned that Mr. Larson had been swallowed up by the Washington whale. His attention, which should have been directed toward his failing state, the paper argued, had been too often directed towards Beltway status.

“We are in the midst of a huge national backlash against Pelosi’s management of taxing and spending policies that affect the economy,” the paper said, “and against the federal health care reform bill that Pelosi and Larson shepherded through Congress… We feel she [Brickley] would bring the 1st District seat back around to being about Connecticut’s interests, after years of having a congressman who long ago got caught up as a key lieutenant in an inside-the-Beltway partisan war that has very little to do with what is good for Torrington, Winsted, New Hartford and our state.”

The paper also noted that Brickley has devoted her efforts in private enterprise to helping companies become more prosperous, not a bad resume line at a time when many Connecticut companies have for years been moving to greener pastures elsewhere. Endorsements of this kind, however, are the exception to the rule.

Mr. Blumenthal has no direct experience as a U.S. Senator, but he has had considerable practice in stroking the media, which had not looked closely at some of the cases he prosecuted in Connecticut. Mr. Blumenthal has been taken mostly at his word, as reflected in those ubiquitous press releases that, for 20 years, have rained down on Connecticut’s media like confetti at a wedding. The indespensible critical attitude one expects in a healthy adversarial media never showed up at the wedding. Many people suspect this is the case because Mr. Blumenthal’s world view, iterated endlessly in his ideologically partisan press releases, dovetails with that of Connecticut’s left of center media.

Mr. Blumenthal’s harrying of businesses, sometimes justified, has been a boon to unions and editorial writers advocating left of center views. It simply is not true that Mr. Blumenthal has directed the bulk of his fire at Big Business. It is not true that his office is capable of representing adequately both the interests of state agencies -- a statutory requirement he labors under, except in those cases in which he declines to do so for ideological reasons – AND the interests of whistleblowers employed in the agencies he is charged with representing. The Dickman case throws this discordant representation into bold relief, a point that should have been an issue in Mr. Blumenthal’s senatorial campaign. It wasn’t.

Throughout his campaign, Mr. Blumenthal continued to pelt the media with attorney general releases touting his own moral rectitude. In one of those releases, he advised that he would continue to harry an ADVERTISER – unless the advertiser withdrew from its site notices that might have been placed by prostitutes disguised as masseuses, an obvious First Amendment issue Mr. Blumenthal was successful in forcing the California company to adjust its advertising in such a way that it would become more difficult for police to monitor prostitution activity. Significantly, Mr. Blumenthal reached all the way to California in his effort, leaving similar Connecticut advertisers free to ply their ads unmolested.

The suppression of First Amendment rights by an attorney general not authorized by statute to engage in criminal cases should have alarmed the state’s media, if only because all media has a dog in every First Amendment legal tousle. It didn’t. And Mr. Blumenthal’s assault on the First Amendment succeeded, in large part, because Connecticut’s timid pro-Blumenthal media was unwilling to defend an issue that had been a tar baby since the days of Chautauqua and Temperance societies.

Mr. Blumenthal carefully chooses his targets to comport with liberal orthodoxy. His attorney’s general media releases, far more numerous over a 20 year period than his competitor’s campaign ad brochures, were sent out while Mr. Blumenthal was running for the U.S. Senate. Indeed, his role as attorney general was, oddly, the central pillar of his senatorial campaign. Mr. Blumenthal had chosen his marks well. His successor, possibly George Jepsen, the preferred candidate of the state’s media, will not be able to resist the temptation to follow in his predecessors footsteps. Jepsen, politically and emotionally attached to unions and the traditional Democratic Party agenda, has said he would do so, though in a lower key. The attorney general office will be impervious to media criticism that never arrives at its doorstep.

And the absence of such criticism certainly was no bar to media endorsements of Mr. Blumenthal.

Letters, We Get Letters, Larson to Dems – Be Bold

Democratic leaders in the U.S. House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Caucus Chairman John Larson, have sent out to their troops a memo that outlines the general defense House members will be using during the election season to deflect impertinent charges from their Republicans opponents.

The memo is about two pages long, considerably less than the 2,319 page Dodd-Frank Bill that reorganizes American enterprise or the 1,990 page Health Care Bill that, for the first time in U.S. history, compels young American citizens to purchase a product, health insurance, they may not want or need. Given the brevity of the letter, Connecticut’s Democratic U.S. congressional delegation might even read it. Most congresspersons, including the issuers of the memo, neglected to read either the Health Care or the Dodd-Frank bill in it’s entirety, and Pelosi famously quipped about one or the other or both of them that they would have to be passed so that House members who voted for them would know what’s in them.

The campaign to-do memo is recorded below for posterity:

July 30, 2010

Dear Democratic Colleague:

Now it is time to define the choice America faces. We are moving America forward, not back.

You have worked tirelessly for 19 months to move America forward, begin to restore Main Street values, and create jobs here at home. We are on track to create more net new jobs this year than President Bush created over his entire eight-year term. Our advocacy for Americans who work for a living— in the face of relentless opposition by Wall Street and the big bankers, Big Oil, and the health insurance industry— has defined our Caucus.
We will move America forward in a New Direction, toward a more broadly shared prosperity—investing in America’s small businesses, clean energy jobs, and middle-class families. We will revitalize a manufacturing base that shrunk by 4.6 million American jobs under the last Administration—because when we Make it in America, we lead the world. And we will bring down our deficit by putting Americans back to work and making the difficult decisions that were deferred over the last decade.

We are not going back to the same failed Bush policies that cost us more than 8 million jobs—and threatened to destroy 8 million more without our intervention, according to independent economists. We are not going back to failed policies that exploded our deficit in order to give tax breaks to those who don’t need them—and those whose recklessness caused the mess we are in.

Americans living paycheck to paycheck—or without a paycheck—can’t afford to go back.

We must use the coming weeks to make this choice crystal clear. The President will be leading the charge. We want the power of all of our voices to convey these messages, so we ask you to plan public events and media interactions in your district around weekly themes—if they work for you. We will be driving these messages at the national level.

August 2—Fighting For The Middle Class: “Make it in America” Week

We are wrapping up a Congressional work period with a series of bills to promote a Make it in America manufacturing revival. Members can also highlight Recovery Act jobs in your districts. Republicans in Congress have sided incessantly with big corporations shipping jobs overseas and Wall Street bankers who helped cause the meltdown.

August 9 – Fighting for the Middle Class: Protecting Social Security Week

The 75th anniversary of Social Security is August 14. Members can highlight how, once again, this bedrock promise is under assault from Congressional Republicans seeking to privatize and cut Social Security that Americans have earned. Democrats will protect and strengthen Social Security.

August 16 – Fighting for the Middle Class: Consumer Protection Week

As students head back to college and families head out for back-to-school shopping, it’s a good time to highlight the strong consumer protections enacted by this Congress. Republicans sided with the Big Banks over students when we made college more affordable. Republicans fought a first-ever consumer protection agency and split over a Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights. And as we continue the drumbeat on the Patient’s Bill of Rights giving Americans and their doctors control over their health care, Republicans would repeal long overdue protections for Americans if they get sick or have a pre-existing condition.

August 23—Fighting for the Middle Class: Small Business Week

Our economic recovery must be powered by small businesses. This Congress has enacted 8 separate tax cuts for small businesses, made health insurance more affordable, and fought to get credit flowing—time and again, over Republican opposition. This week, Senate Republicans moved to block billions of dollars of private-sector lending for small businesses.

August 30—Troops & Veterans Week

Since 2007, a Democratic-led Congress has made historic investments in services for our veterans. After eight years of insufficient support under Republicans, since 2007, we have increased funding for veterans health care and benefits by 70 percent, providing over 10,000 new claims processors to reduce case backlogs, 3,389 doctors, 14,316 nurses, 145 community-based outpatient clinics, and 92 new vet centers. We have improved troop pay and equipment, and improved conditions for military families. Around the August 31st deadline to get combat troops out of Iraq, Members can focus on the promise being kept.

September 6—Fighting for the Middle Class: “Make it in America”

In September, we will keep working on legislation to rebuild American manufacturing and make America the world’s leader in innovative technologies, after a decade of damage to our economy. Members can highlight our top priority—creating jobs here in America— as we head back for the next work period.

Please find enclosed two pocket cards to help you deliver this message. The first is our main argument, Moving America Forward, Not Back; and the second is Protecting Social Security at 75 Years. You should have already received a pocket card on Make it in America, our manufacturing strategy; as well as our message on national security.

Thank you for your service, for your leadership, and for representing working Americans in some of the most important debates of our era. Please have a productive and pleasant District Work Period. We look forward to seeing you, in your districts and in September.

Best regards,
Nancy Pelosi
Speaker
Steny Hoyer
Majority Leader
James E. Clyburn
Majority Whip
John Larson

In addition to the memo, Larson is sending around a to-do card that might fit snugly into a wallet or purse, so that Democrats on the campaign trail can whip it out if ever they are asked a pointed question by Rick Green – which is not too likely.

The memo reads:

Be Bold, be bold, but not too bold
Lest the marrow of thy bones run cold

Green, in the meanwhile, had jumped the turnstile so that he might register for the primaries as a Republican and vote for Ross Garber as attorney general, thus calling upon his head the curses of his entire family, but for his grandfather, who had a grudge for some reason against the sainted Franklin Roosevelt.

Responding to this traitorous abandonment of his party, one imagines a stalwart Democrat whose ancestors did vote for FDR responding: “Someone lock the barn door before this horses’ ass gets a chance to sneak back in,” the beer infused anti-Green Democrat drinking to the health of departing U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd and praising God for having gerrymandered Larson's 1st District.

“Long may Larson wave."

Blumenthal Hits McMahon, Hides

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, secure in his bunker after it became known that he lied concerning his military service, has since ventured out briefly to attack Republican Party nominee Linda McMahon -- through a spokesperson.

McMahon, according to the title of a story written by Hartford Courant reporter Daniela Altimari, is really “Linda McBush”:

“Taking a page from the Democratic Party’s 2006 playbook, the Blumenthal campaign is looking to link Republican Linda McMahon with George Bush.

"’Linda McMahon paid a Bush economic advisor $20,000 to rewrite Bush's failed economic policies into her Back 2 Bush economic plan,'’ Mindy Myers, Richard Blumenthal's campaign manager, said in a press release this morning.

"’That means more runaway deficits, more corporate and special interest loopholes, and more tax breaks for people who don't need them, leaving working families paying the bill. I can tell you for free that there's nothing new about the Linda McBush plan. It isn't good for the people of Connecticut, it's good for her.’"

Should he succeed in replacing U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, Blumenthal will join a Democratic team that, far from solving the county’s solvency problems, has extended former President George Bush’s economic policy, adding to it new spending charges and programs that transfer jobs from the private to the public sector. When Bush retired from office, the national debt was $9.85 trillion, a great disappointment at the time to CBS news.

“On the day President Bush took office,’ the station noted at the tail end of the Bush administration, “the national debt stood at $5.727 trillion. The latest number from the Treasury Department shows the national debt now stands at more than $9.849 trillion. That's a 71.9 percent increase on Mr. Bush's watch.”
The federal debt has metastasized more rapidly under President Obama and the Pelosi congress. Obama’s legacy to Blumenthal’s prospective grandchildren is, in round numbers, a 14 trillion dollar unpaid bill.

The $14 trillion figure -- which represents the federal debt -- is only part of the national debt. State and local debt amounts to about $2.5 trillion, a good deal of it in pension funds owed to government workers, a pool of employees that has expanded greatly under the Obama-Pelosi economic prescriptions. Assuming reasonable investment returns, nearly half the nation’s state pension funds will be insolvent by 2025. The first city to run out of pension money for retirees, according to an eye-opening article in National Review, will be Springfield, Ill in 2018, a state that was the hotbed of much of the Obama administration. Pension funds in New Jersey, Indiana and Connecticut are expected to go belly up in 2019.

The Social Security “trust fund” (trust in God, all others pay cash) has no cash in it; which is to say, it is $106 trillion short. An 81 percent tax increase would be necessary to meet outstanding obligations. Add liabilities for the government’s guarantee of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac – Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank’s gift to Blumenthal’s grandchildren -- securities supported under the bailout plus state health care and other benefits, and the real national debt crests at about $130 trillion.

These are the kinds of figures that lend credence to Peter Schiff’s view that the solvency crisis in the United States has been caused by government meddling in a global economic market that is not free and rapidly losing its capitalistic characteristics.

Blumenthal may not be surprised to learn that corporate and special interest loopholes are likely to increase as the Dodd inspired national regulatory scheme rolls out into the future, because loopholes are inextricably tied to regulations, which have increased exponentially in the Obama administration. Blumenthal is no stranger to either regulations or special interests of a kind tolerable to Democrats.

Blumenthal has two immediate problems: 1) The comments here made by his campaign director suggest a basic misunderstanding of free market economics; and 2) the solvency problems besetting the United States are such as cannot be settled though methods usually employed by the attorney general. U.S. Senator Blumenthal, it may be assumed, would not be inclined to sue congresspersons, including Dodd, for having facilitated the fall of the housing market in the United States, a fate Canada escaped because its legislators refused to tinker with a market that even now closely resembles the U.S. housing market of years past, when bankers with standards lent money to prospective purchasers who could afford good faith down payments of up to 20 percent and whose incomes were such as to convince bankers that borrowers could afford to make monthly mortgage payments.

Now that Blumenthal has surfaced from his bunker, someone should try to arrange a debate between the three prospective U.S. senators – Blumenthal, McMahon and Schiff – centering on the question: Is the problem solvency, stupid?

Larson Lies Down With The Fleas

It’s not all that unusual for leading politicians to bump up lobbyists, the vanguard of Wall Street, for campaign cash, but the latest romance between Larson and the enemies of Main Street has a new twist to it.

Larson, a close student of the late U.S. Rep. John Murtha, widely regarded as the earmark king, now wants the titans of industry to pony up money AND “Messaging and campaign strategy,” according to the Roll Call report.

“But the decision to formally assign lobbyists to lawmakers is unusual, according to several Democratic lobbyists.

“’It was not just a fundraising ask,’ according to a lobbyist in attendance. ‘It was also to help out with campaign.’

“They said, ‘These people could use extra help, not only in terms of resources, but also advice in terms of setting up ground messaging,’ the lobbyist added.

“They basically asked us to adopt a Member,’ according to another lobbyist at the dinner, who declined to speak on the record…

“The ask was formalized Wednesday evening at a dinner at Acqua Al 2, an Italian restaurant on Capitol Hill, organized by Jennifer Crider, political director for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and deputy executive director at the DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee].

“The effort is being driven by Pelosi loyalists, such as Democratic bundlers Tony Podesta of the Podesta Group, Ben Barnes of the Barnes Group, Steve Elmendorf of Elmendorf Strategies and Brian Wolff, a former DCCC executive director who is now a lobbyist at the Edison Electric Institute. That’s a notable development considering Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is the Caucus’ point man when it comes to fundraising from the downtown business community.”

Nice.

Wall Street, virulently denounced by President Barack Obama, will not only be in your Democratic Congressman’s pocket should the alliance bear fruit; they will be in your congressman’ brains -- running their campaigns.