Corruption in Corrupticut

Not all corruption is equal.

In a recent column, “A Kennedy Stirs Connecticut's Politics,” Kevin Rennie sideswiped departing Republican leader Larry Cafero, who is to the Republican Party what Rocky Marciano was to boxing, a hard slugger:

“Cafero got snagged in a 2012 federal investigation into campaign contributions and legislation. He was caught on video as an informant deposited $5,000 in cash into a refrigerator in Cafero's office. The money was converted into campaign contributions from straw donors, and the scheme was revealed last year during the criminal trial of a campaign aide to former Speaker of the House Christopher Donovan.

“What a mess Cafero leaves in his wake. His gelatinous, silent deputies, Reps. Themis Klarides and Vincent Candelora, have disgraced themselves beyond repair for failing to take a stand for honor during this long fiasco. They will wear Cafero's deep stains for however long they remain in public life.”

And the sins of the political father shall be visited upon the heads of his political children – yea, even to the tenth generation: “… gelatinous, silent deputies… have disgraced themselves beyond repair… They will wear Cafero’s deep stains for however long they remain in public life.”

And the stain that has dishonored Cafero and his gelatinous deputies is … what exactly?

An “informant,” Ray Soucy, tapped by the FBI as a singing canary, deposited an envelope containing $5,000 in cash “into a refrigerator in Cafero’s office.” Apparently – though we may never know for certain – Mr. Soucy was given the cash by the FBI and told – though we may never know for certain – to make use of it to incriminate Mr. Cafero. Mr. Soucy had earlier used money provided to him to incriminate several associates of then Speaker of the House Chris Donovan. The net cast over the troubled waters by the FBI snagged a few Donovan operatives, but the big fish, Mr. Donovan, got away. Mr. Donovan’s campaign for the 5^th District seat in the U.S. House collapsed in ruins under the hammer blows of the FBI investigation.

The attempt to ensnare Mr. Cafero failed when the Republican leader in the General Assembly noticed Mr. Soucy stuffing the cash in the refrigerator and rejected the FBI bagman’s fraudulent cash donation.

Speculation may and usually does run wild at this point. Did Mr. Cafero know when the cash was being stuffed in the fridge that Mr. Soucy was an FBI plant? Probably not, because following Refrigeratorgate, Mr. Cafero did accept from Mr. Soucy tainted donations in the form of checks that he apparently did not know were tainted. The FBI later would advise Mr. Cafero he was not a target of their investigation. Mr. Soucy, the FBI plant, was successful in delivering tainted campaign funds to several of Mr. Donovan’s associates, some of whom were convicted and sentenced to prison. But Mr. Donovan, his campaign for the U.S. House in tatters, escaped the prison noose. The play of events suggests – though, of course, we may never know for certain – that the sting operation, at some point, may have been compromised. In any case, the Big Fishes wriggled free, and the FBI was satisfied with smaller fry. None of Mr. Cafero’s gelatinous associates were arrested, very possibly because neither Reps. Themis Klarides nor Vincent Candelora had accepted tainted campaign donations.

Never-the-less, the two targets of Mr. Rennie’s outrage, Ms. Klarides and Mr. Candelora, are not merely gelatinous; they “have disgraced themselves beyond repair; they are dishonorable; they will “wear Cafero's deep stains for however long they remain in public life.”

So says Connecticut’s equivalent of Nathanial Hawthorne’s the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne’s godly pastor in the Scarlet Letter. The Reverend Dimmesdale was a secret sinner always in good odor with his flock:

'People say,' said another, 'that, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to his heart that such a scandal has come upon his congregation."

In any partisan commentary that has pretentions to non-partisanship, fairness equates to equal flailing. If you whip a Republican who richly deserves the whipping – say, a felonious governor – you must find a Democrat to whip, so that the pans of your justice scale will be evenly balanced. If you whip a Democratic Speaker of the House, you must find on the Republican side someone equally odious you must flail. And the weight of the accusation must appear to be equivalent – even when the justice pans bear different weights.

There is no indication – NONE – that Ms. Klarides deserves the letter “A” Mr. Rennie has pinned upon her. Mr. Cafero’s honor was not damaged by an FBI canary whose cash campaign contribution he rejected, as politely as possible. The sting operation is as old as Adam and Eve: The serpent in the garden is God’s advocate sent upon the earth, like the FBI, to seek the ruin of men’s souls. Sometimes the satanic advocate, the tester of men, succeeds, sometimes not.

Both Mr. Donovan and Mr. Cafero rejected the overtures of the FBI’s satanic advocate, Mr. Soucy, once a union leader in Connecticut’s prison system. Because Mr. Soucy  had co-operated with the FBI, he avoided jail time. Donovangate should put Mr.  Rennie in mind of a remark made by Bill Buckley following a failed 1957 coup plot against Indonesian strongman Sukarno: "The attempted assassination of Sukarno last week,” Mr. Buckley wrote in National Review, “had all the earmarks of a CIA operation. Everyone in the room was killed except Sukarno."

Measured by the number of top dogs upon whom the shadow of the prison fell, the Donovan sting operation was far from successful. Perhaps Mr. Rennie will devote one of his columns to explaining why and then demand that the General Assembly create an Inspector General Office to examine and prosecute future cases of corruption in Connecticut, the state that regulates everything but itself.

Occhiogrosso, Moving On Up, Or Down?

 

Roy Occhiogrosso, the Vice President for Global Strategy who has shuttled back and forth between Governor Dannel Malloy’s administration and his duties at Global Strategy, has now become, according to a short piece in CTMirror, “a consultant to the Connecticut Democratic Party.” Apparently, no one in Connecticut’s media knows whether Mr. Occhiogrosso’s new Position Of Influence (POI) within the Democratic Party’s lucrative off shore political operation is a lateral or a vertical move.

Is this a political promotion, or is Mr. Occhiogrosso simply biding his time until his former boss, Mr. Malloy, decides to enter the lists for governor? Mr. Malloy has said he would make an announcement concerning his re-election as governor sometime in the merry month of May, months after Republican gubernatorial contenders have bloodied themselves in pre-general election cat fights.

How much is Mr. Occhiogrosso and/or Global Strategy getting paid for the new consultancy? And, more importantly, what specific service has Mr. Occhiogrosso, once called Mr. Malloy’s “uber-flack” by CTMirror, performed for Connecticut’s Democratic Party? Even more importantly, has Mr. Occhiogrosso declared on his tax forms all emoluments he may have received from the party for which he may or may not have performed a service?

The Feds, as Mr. Occhiogrosso must know, are back in Connecticut. They are, according to a blog written by Kevin Rennie for the Hartford Courant, gathering data in a Grand Jury that could be used by prosecutors to cut short former Governor John Rowland’s career as a radio talk show host.

A conviction may turn on the question: Did Mr. Rowland in fact perform a service for Brian Foley, the owner of a number of nursing homes, for which Mr. Foley paid Mr. Rowland $30,000? The operative prosecutorial assumption is that Mr. Rowland had received a payment from Mr. Foley in exchange for a political favor extended to Mr. Foley’s wife, Lisa Wilson Foley, who had been running as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut’s 5^th District. Neither Mrs. Foley nor Mr. Rowland were politicians at the time of the possible political pay-off.

Nor is it certain that there was a political pay-off.  It has been said that Mr. Rowland had been critical of former State Senator Andrew Roraback on his program at a time when Lisa-Wilson Foley and other Republican contestants were involved in a struggle to obtain the Republican Party nomination for the 5^th District U.S. Senate seat. The nomination fell to Mr. Roraback, who thereafter lost the contest in a general election to Democratic Party nominee Elizabeth Esty. Ms. Esty prevailed over union favored Democratic candidate Chris Donovan following a federal investigation into campaign financing irregularities that had forced Mr. Donovan to vacate the field. After his loss to Ms. Esty, Mr. Roraback was appointed by Mr. Malloy to Connecticut’s Superior Court.

It cannot be said that Mr. Rowland’s criticism of Mr. Roraback resulted in any political harm to Mr. Roraback, who emerged as the nominee of his party.  Neither did Ms. Foley receive an effective political benefit from radio talk show host Rowland, and most grown-ups understand that conservative radio talk show hosts tend to prefer the less leftward leaning candidate in any Republican Party contest.

Some people regard Mr. Rowland as providing balance to Connecticut’s left of center media hegemon, which tends to support the most leftward leaning candidate in primaries and general elections. The Hartford Courant, for instance, supported Ms. Esty over Mr. Roraback in the general election, even though Mr. Roraback easily passed the paper’s several litmus tests: The Republican candidate was a social liberal and a fiscal conservative; he had far more practical experience in government than Ms. Esty, and he was just the sort of moderate Republican, occasionally favored by the Courant, who might have provided a necessary balance in Connecticut’s all progressive Democratic U.S. Congressional delegation.

As a practical matter, the Courant’s endorsement of Esty was more fatal to Mr. Roraback than was Mr. Rowland’s “attack” on Mr. Roraback before the Republican nominating convention had chosen him as its designated candidate for the 5^th District.

None of these quibbles would prevent a Grand Jury – essentially a prosecutorial Star Chamber operation – from returning an indictment against Mr. Rowland. A Grand Jury properly primed by an aggressive prosecutor is fully capable of indicting a watermelon on a charge of jaywalking. But the case against Mr. Rowland appears weak, if only because neither he nor Ms. Foley were active politicians in a position to dispense political favors and, bearing in mind Mr. Rowland’s public persona as a “conservative” talk show host, his negative endorsement of Mr. Roraback is not in the least surprising. How is a talk show “attack” on Mr. Roraback substantially different than an editorial attack on a candidate for office whose opponent is favored by the editorial board of a newspaper?

The notion that a radio talk show host would embrace a candidate for office, accept money from the husband of the candidate for a service that either was or was not performed, and then attack the favored candidate’s opponent is a shabby proposition. Some journalists would rightly and indignantly reject such an arrangement; so would honorable politicians. But jail time for a radio talk show host who pumps up an ideologically like-minded political wannabe – maybe not.

The failure to pay taxes for services rendered, on the other hand, is a whole different kettle of fish. Mr. Rowland’s tax payments had better be in order. And while prosecutors are on the hunt in Connecticut, Mr. Occhiogrosso’s tax representations also had better be able to pass the Mackerel in moonlight sniff test.

One can never be too careful.

The Stink War

 “The ink war.” That is how Tom Dudchik of Capitol Report styled the controversy between Chis Powell, the icon busting editor of the Journal Inquirer and, following a rebuttal editorial in the Hartford Courant, pretty much everyone else manning the barricades on the left who ever lifted a pen or pounded a keyboard in defense of the liberal view of the decline of print media.

The controversial pieces are printed here as they appeared, in chronological sequence; first, Mr. Powell’s initial column; then the Courant’s editorial rebuttal; then, an interview with Jim Romenesko; then Mr. Powell’s response to what he regards as the distortions of his critics; and finally a Courant rebuttal accusing Mr. Powell of having defended the indefensible – namely, himself. Unprinted here are a slew of editorials and commentary pieces all, more or less, bearing the same message: that Mr. Powell has attacked all single parent moms; that he is a holdover from those glorious days of yore when print media enjoyed a monopoly on dispensing information; that he has failed to understand properly the regrettable inroads made on the monopoly by the internet and the loss of advertising that has impoverished many newspapers; that he is a closet misogynist who has unjustly denigrated the poor.

The whips and scorns the left is so eager to brandish have been left out of this account for space reasons.

In the good old days of print journalism – when, for instance, George Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton were pulling each other’s hair in British papers – newspaper editors thought it proper to print in full both the newspaper’s points on some controversy of the day and hearty rebuttals written by controversialists who defended an opposing point of view.

This is no longer done. Instead, editorialists and commentators generally summarize whatever points they wish to demolish in print, running in full only their own invaluable opinions.

In a bow to old and perhaps more just journalistic processes long abandoned, the remarks of Mr. Powell and some of his critics are here published in full – without additional remarks.   

Journalism's problem may not be the Internet 

By Chris Powell

Posted: Saturday, September 28, 2013 12:15 am

Journalism is hailing the acquisition of The Washington Post by Internet retailing entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, figuring that he has both the genius and wealth to develop a new self-sustaining model of journalism. This may be a bit presumptuous.

For as much as Bezos' company, Amazon, has done remarkable things, its decisive business strategy was only sales tax evasion, an advantage that seems to be coming to an end as Congress prepares to enact legislation allowing states to collect sales taxes on Internet purchases. If the future of journalism rests with the Internet rather than with the old business models of declining profitability -- newsprint and the broadcast airwaves -- the Internet model of profitable journalism still hasn't been invented yet. And if such a model was even close at hand, the Post under its longtime owners, the Graham family, could have well afforded to undertake it without any help from Bezos.

Further, while the decline of journalism coincides with the rise of the Internet, the Internet may not be the primary cause at all.

Certainly the Internet has given journalism a powerful competitor for public attention, just as radio and then television did. The Internet is a far more powerful competitor because, unlike radio and TV, it allows people to indulge their particular interests at any hour of the day to the exclusion of everything else, to live always in the narrowest of worlds rather than in a broad one. For example, thanks to the Internet someone well might know nearly everything about the Boston Red Sox, Miley Cyrus, and sunspots and yet be unaware that an airplane had just crashed a few streets away, that the governor had just been sent to prison for corruption, and that town government had just raised property taxes again.

That is, traditional journalism, especially newspaper journalism, remains indispensable for conveying local and state news and providing some understanding of public policy, there being few exclusively Internet-based sources of information about those things. But do local and state news and some understanding of public policy remain indispensable to most people?

Even in a supposedly prosperous and well-educated state like Connecticut, how strong can demand for those things be now that half the children are being raised without two parents at home and thus acquiring developmental handicaps; 70 percent of community college and state university freshmen have not mastered what used to be considered basic high school skills; poverty has risen steadily even as government appropriations in the name of remediating poverty have risen steadily; and democracy has sunk so much that half the eligible population isn't voting in presidential elections, 65 percent isn't voting in state elections, and 85 percent isn't voting in municipal elections?

This social disintegration and decline in civic engagement coincide with the decline of traditional journalism just as much as the rise of the Internet does.

Indeed, newspapers still can sell themselves to traditional households -- two-parent families involved with their children, schools, churches, sports, civic groups, and such. But newspapers cannot sell themselves to households headed by single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they're living in, and couldn't afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read. And such households constitute a rising share of the population.

These days in Connecticut if you want to know what's happening in your geographic community -- your town and your state -- rather than just your virtual community, the Internet is of little help; you still have to read newspapers or their Internet sites.

If you don't want to know or couldn't care less, that's your right, but then the problem is much bigger than journalism.

  

Chris Powell Can't Pin Newspaper Woes On Welfare Moms

Editorial, The Hartford Courant

6:07 p.m. EDT, October 2, 2013

It is no secret that print journalism faces enormous challenges today, but we don't think these challenges were brought about by welfare moms. That puts us at odds with the Manchester Journal Inquirer's managing editor, Chris Powell.

Many students of the industry ascribe the decline in print journalism to the rise of the Internet and the migration of classified advertising to sites like Craigslist. In a column that's getting a lot of attention online, Mr. Powell instead proposes that the real villain is a breakdown of the social fabric, epitomized by rent-cheating, barely literate welfare mothers.

Mr. Powell says, and here we agree, that newspapers are still indispensable for conveying local and state news and providing understanding of public policy. But he seems to think many people cannot comprehend this information "now that half the children are being raised without two parents at home and thus acquiring developmental handicaps." He's wrong: Nearly 70 percent of Connecticut children live with two married parents and have since 2008, according to the Census Bureau. We couldn't substantiate his claim about developmental handicaps.

He says newspapers can still market themselves to "traditional households — two-parent families involved with their children." But newspapers "cannot sell themselves to households headed by single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they're living in, and couldn't afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read."

Aside from his stereotyping, and general nastiness, newspapers never relied on people who couldn't afford to buy the paper, and fortunately there aren't many such people. Mr. Powell says such families are increasing, but the numbers say otherwise. There are 28 percent fewer households getting welfare today than a decade ago. Many of them are headed by grandparents, not single women, and many recipients are working, according to the state Department of Social Services.

And journalism readership is greater than ever. More readers saw Mr. Powell's column online than in print, and that includes caring single moms.

The challenge for the industry is to create a business model that supports quality journalism, however delivered. We're working on it.

The challenge is also to chronicle and change with the times, not hearken back to supposed good old days. Journalism needs to evolve, be dynamic, embrace the future, not run to a mythic past, while insulting people and getting facts wrong to boot.

The media's job is to portray the world as it is, not as Ronald Reagan might have seen it. Mr. Powell often is an effective provocateur and commentator, but this rant is unworthy of responsible journalism. 

Controversial Journal Inquirer Editor: “If My Opinion Is So Wacky, Why Bother With It?

From, JimRomenesko.com

October 4, 2013

Manchester (Conn.) Journal Inquirer managing editor Chris Powell was blasted earlier this week after he wrote that “newspapers cannot sell themselves to households headed by single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they’re living in, and couldn’t afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read.”

The Hartford Courant said “this rant is unworthy of responsible journalism.” It’s “off-base on many levels,” added Matt DeRienzo.

Will Bunch put Powell down “as Exhibit A for exactly how NOT to save newsrooms.”

Kirsten Lambertsen ‏nominated the managing editor “for @WhiteWhine of the month. Make that, the year.”

What does Powell have to say about his critics and the online reaction to his column?

“Well, for starters, I was surprised to find myself becoming so important,” he tells Romenesko readers. “After all, the world is full of opinions, including wacky ones, so what makes the opinion of an editor in Connecticut who is of no particular renown so deserving of criticism nationally? If my opinion is so wacky, why bother with it? Hell, the federal government has just been incapacitated. Aren’t there a few more important things to upset commentators?”

He says he never blamed welfare mothers for the decline of the newspaper business.

Rather, I correlated the decline of the newspaper business — the decline of the news business generally, really — with the social disintegration all around us, and cited quite a few examples, including the collapse of public education and participation in elections. The disintegration represented by childbearing outside marriage, a frequent topic in my writing, was a prominent example because it underlies so much of the social disintegration generally, as it is child abuse and neglect. Even the liberal-originating social science has been confirming this lately.

Many single mothers took the now-infamous paragraph of criticism about welfare mothers as an attack on them, but the paragraph criticized only WELFARE mothers in some VERY SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES.

Powell says he’s not surprised by the “abusive” emails and calls that the Journal Inquirer received after his column went viral. “That’s always the case when there’s controversy and when people don’t have to identify themselves,” he writes in an email. “More disappointing to me is the continuing general refusal to recognize the social disintegration.”

Will he address his critics in a future column?

There’s a possibility, he says, “but I can live with letting the column speak for itself. ….Besides, while criticism can sting, my 15 minutes of fame will be up today or tomorrow.”

So social disintegration isn't a problem for news?

By Chris Powell

Posted: Monday, October 7, 2013 1:30 am | Updated: 6:24 am, Mon Oct 7, 2013.

Journalists from Bangor to Salt Lake City and from Philadelphia to Miami have launched themselves into smug ridicule in recent days, their headlines proclaiming that an editor in Connecticut had blamed single mothers for the decline of the newspaper industry. It seems to be the national journalistic pile-on of the month, overshadowing even the shutdown of the federal government.

It is also a distortion.

Rather, that editor -- this writer -- wrote in a column that the decline of newspapers and the news business generally may correlate less with the rise of the Internet than with social disintegration, as represented by the collapse of public education and voter participation, the failure of government to alleviate poverty, and the growth in welfare-dependent households, particularly those headed by unmarried, unskilled, and largely illiterate women who have several children by different men.

It was the latter example that set everyone off.

It was said to be an attack on all single women, all single women with children, and all households with unconventional parenting. But the column criticized an entirely different group.

It was said to be "misogynist," as if in the era of women's equality certain women are not to be held responsible for their anti-social behavior.

It was said to be "racist," as if the inability of much of the population to speak and read the national language does not impugn immigration policy and risk disunity.

Some critics disputed the column's assertion that half the children in Connecticut are being raised in households without two parents. The figure is arguable but the Washington-based research group Child Trends reported last year that more than half of children nationally born to women under 30 are now born outside marriage. Meanwhile the fatherlessness rate approaches 90 percent in Connecticut's cities and exceeds 50 percent in many public schools in inner suburbs, dragging education down.

So why argue the exact percentage if not to suggest that this phenomenon is not a problem? And if it is not a problem, why is Connecticut spending $800 million a year on its Department of Children and Families?

For many years now even the liberal social science research has reported that childbearing outside marriage is far more than a problem -- that it is a society-wide catastrophe.

Poverty and the ignorance it imposes are not environments for selling newspapers or any news -- nor for preserving democracy.

Disputing the column, the Hartford Courant said welfare rolls are down. But food stamps, government disability benefits rolls, and earned income tax credits are way up. Indeed, as National Public Radio reported in March, disability is the new welfare.

The Courant's dismissal of the relevance of all this to civic life and journalism is refuted by the newspaper's own circulation figures, its long having had more home-delivered subscribers in suburban West Hartford than in Hartford itself though Hartford has a far larger population -- one far more dependent on welfare.

The Courant also faulted the column for "general nastiness," as if the newspaper's own premier columnists, Colin McEnroe, Kevin Rennie, and Jim Shea, have achieved their audiences with a devotion to subtlety.

The challenge to the news industry, the Courant says, "is to create a business model that supports quality journalism, however delivered." But there can be no such model if society keeps impoverishing itself.

The news industry, the Courant adds, should "embrace the future, not run to a mythic past." But of course for the Courant's parent company, Tribune, which is selling its newspapers, the future is television -- a future without any need for literacy. And there was nothing mythic about a past where Americans were educated, read, participated, and voted.

Chris Powell Doubles Down On Blaming Poor Moms

Editorial, The Hartford Courant

Journal Inquirer Editor Bemoans 'Distortion' Of Earlier Column, But Message Seems The Same

5:57 p.m. EDT, October 7, 2013

Chris Powell, managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, seems intent on finding a fall girl for the woes of newspapers. Once again he's blaming women.

He wrote in a Sept. 28 column, "Journalism's Problem May Not Be The Internet," that newspapers' real problem was "single women who have several children by different fathers, survive on welfare stipends, can hardly speak or read English, move every few months to cheat their landlords, barely know what town they're living in, and couldn't afford a newspaper subscription even if they could read."

This bizarre theory was trounced nationwide. We'd hoped it had been put to rest.

But now it comes again.

In his latest column, Mr. Powell accuses critics of "distortion." He says he was really saying the culprit for newspaper woes is "social disintegration," as represented by a host of ills, including "the growth in welfare-dependent households, particularly those headed by unmarried, unskilled, and largely illiterate women who have several children by different men."

Sounds like the same argument.

There are some worrying socioeconomic trends in the U.S. But unwed and welfare-dependent mothers aren't responsible for newspapers' fate. The rise of online journalism is. Rather than bemoan this, journalists have to jump on the jet.

Mr. Powell has been a zealous advocate for open government and other worthy causes. If only he could harness that energy toward engaging in the future of the news industry rather than blaming the blameless.

Foley Charges Partly Vindicated By Critic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the result is a softer, more gentle Rennie:

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

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

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

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

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

Gray Might Face Questions

Kevin Rennie, a Hartford Courant columnist, writes on his blog “Daily Ructions” that Charles Gray, the “spouse of Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s legal counsel and former Pullman & Comley lawyer Andrew McDonald,” might expect a few questions concerning “the details of his relationship with Pullman & Comley, when he appears before the Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee on Thursday at noon to his nomination to the CAA [Connecticut Airport Authority].”

According to Mr. Rennie:

“Pullman & Comley had more than a good friend in the room when the Connecticut Airport Authority rejected considerably lower bids from two other firms and hired the Bridgeport-based law firm to serve as its counsel. It had a former client in authority member Charles Gray, spouse of Governor Dannel P. Malloy’s legal counsel and former Pullman & Comley lawyer Andrew McDonald.”

Malloy And His Critics

Kevin Rennie, a political columnist who writes for the Hartford Courant, very likely can expect a sling or an arrow to be coming his way sometime soon. Malloyalites do not react with equanimity to sharp criticism, and in a recent column Mr. Rennie notes that Mr. Malloy, short on cash he needs to plug a reappearing budget deficit, is “squeezing the Mohegans,” owners of one of Connecticut’s two Indian casinos, “for political contributions at the same time he is wielding the power of his office.”


Mr. Rennie notes that the Clean Election Fund, which gave Mr. Malloy more than $8 million to level the playing field between candidate for governor Malloy and his Republican rival, has tapped itself on the shoulder in its annual report for having made it possible for Connecticut citizens to reclaim “their government with the already dramatically reduced role of special interest influence in Connecticut elections."

But they haven’t, Rennie writes:

“No, it hasn't. On Feb. 3, the head of the Mohegans will hold a funding luncheon for Prosperity for Connecticut, Malloy's political action committee, at a casino hotel. The price per ticket is $750, the maximum the law allows. The pressure is on to sell a lot of tickets. The Mohegan PAC slipped a maximum contribution to Malloy's committee on Dec. 28, so it's allowed to give again in the new year.”

The Mohegans have little choice but to play the usual political game: “Competition is increasing. The recession and stagnant aftermath damaged their business. The tribe is trying to refinance more than a $1 billion in bonds. It faces February and April deadlines to pay investors. It needs a piece of online gaming.”

Mr. Rennie may be mistaken in part. While Mr. Malloy is raising money for Prosperity for Connecticut, it is not his PAC. Mr. Malloy’s PAC, DanPAC, was discontinued earlier last month.

The chairperson of Prosperity For Connecticut is James Wade, one of the Grand Poobahs of the Democratic Party and for twenty years its outside counsel. Mr. Poobah, associated with Robinson and Cole, drafted the procedural and substantive rules of the party and occasionally represented it before the United States Supreme Court. Many of the contributions to Prosperity For Connecticut come from lobbyists or dependents of lobbyists.

Mr. Malloy’s real problem, however, is what it always has been: funny budget numbers.

Connecticut once again is in the red, according to a below the fold story in the CTNow section of the Hartford Courant written by Christopher Keating .

And the lede, which probably should have run on the front page: “Gov. Dannel Malloy's estimate of pension savings over 20 years was wrong by $3.1 billion, the legislature's nonpartisan fiscal office said Friday.”

The non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis was NEVER able to verify the savings figures claimed by the governor and his Malloyalites when, weeks before a much publicized set-to between Mr. Malloy and SEBAC, Connecticut’s fourth branch of government, the state budget was presented to the Democratic dominated legislature for approval. The legislature approved the budget with its penciled in figures before negotiation between Mr. Malloy and SEBAC were complete, an astounding dereliction of constitution responsibility on the part of a General Assembly that did not want to leave its fingerprints on a budget close to the coming elections. The legislature simply took a hike when the governor was negotiating with unions for putative givebacks, pre-approving the budget before negotiations were complete and by default investing Mr. Malloy what amounted to plenipotentiary power to finalize the budget.

As an amusing sidelight, a group of budget conscious rebels associated with The Roger Sherman Institute last June took the state to court a few weeks after the Malloy-SEBAC document, full of fanciful figures, had been approved by the General Assembly, arguing that it was not in balance. They implored Superior Court Judge James Graham to order the legislature to produce a constitutionally required balanced budget.

Fat chance there. The judge decided that a balanced budget was more or less a term of legislative art. Now, months after the suit, we discover that the state budget is off by $3.1 billon, which ought to bring a blush to the cheeks of derelict Democratic legislators in the House and Senate.

Fat chance there. The Democrats in the General Assembly who surrendered their constitutional prerogatives to Malloyalists and SEBAC have no sense of shame.

One of them, Speaker of the House Chris Dovovan, is asking the people of the 5th District to send him to the U.S. House, so that he can represent the interests of all the people in the state that he, the governor, SEBAC, the Malloyalists and the constitutionally flaccid House he runs have so successfully hoodwinked.

ADDENDA

I am advised by Christine Stewart of CTNewsJunkie that Mr. Rennie was wrong in writing that Prosperity for Connecticut was Mr. Malloy’s PAC: “He's raising money for it yes, but he got rid of his PAC which was DanPAC earlier this month.” It is important to leave this ADDENDA in place, along with the original posting, because it appeared in other venues, a newspaper among them. The text has been corrected.

Blumie Takes A hit

Here is Kevin Rennie’s response to a stunning disclosure made by the New York Times, on the front page no less, concerning Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s non-service in Vietnam:

“Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s campaign for the United States Senate has been holed below the waterline by a devastating New York Times expose of Blumenthal’s false claims to have served in Vietnam. The piece, fed to the paper by the Linda McMahon Seante campaign, is accompanied by a chilling 2008 video of Blumenthal blithely making the false claim. The ‘brilliant’ Blumenthal provides a stunningly inadequate response, with the universal weasel word ‘misspoken’ appearing in the piece. It’s followed by a non-sequitur quote: ‘My intention has always been to be completely clear and accurate and straightforward, out of respect to the veterans who served in Vietnam,’ he said.”

And the story arrives on the equivalent of today’s breakfast table, a packed e-mail cache, with a video showing the U.S. Senate wannabe declaiming on his service in Vietnam.

Rennie’s blog is accompanied with a photo showing the Titanic – or is it the Andrea Doria? – slipping below the waves, swallowed up in a tragic black night, light a’beaming, party goers, one supposes, deprived by the sinking of the ship of their revelry, their hour of joy.

Vietnam – or more precisely, the false claim to have served in Vietnam – is still claiming its casualties.

The man Blumenthal hopes to replace in the senate, Chris Dodd, spent his Vietnam years serving in the Peace Corp in the Dominican Republic, a few miles from Fidel Castro’s festive paradise; but Dodd never claimed to served in Vietnam, while Blumenthal indisputably did.

President Clinton, who clearly avoided the draft, after sticking his toe in the anti-war movement and then wraping himself in a Rhode’s scholarship in England where, safe from whizzing bullets, he protested the war, never claimed to have served in Vietnam, while Blumenthal indisputably did.

Other on this route have found the door opening to a bright political future tightly shut against them.

Blumenthal plans later today to hold a news conference with veterans serving as a patriotic and decorative backdrop. His most recent claim the New York Times story is an outrageous distortion is itself 1) outrageous and 2) a distortion.

MSNBC’s Morning Joe discusses the issue here.

Famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward weighs in here.

The question that hangs like a Damoclean sword over Blumenthal’s head this morning is: Will Blumenthal have a future in the US senate? Has the fat lady sung?