It's all over

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It's all over - any lingering doubts about who would be the Democratic candidate for Senate in 2012 should be resolved by this press release:

Today, Congressman Chris Murphy (CT-5) announced that Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen, Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, and State Comptroller Kevin Lembo are endorsing his candidacy for U.S. Senate. These early endorsements come on the heels of Murphy receiving the support of dozens of Democratic leaders from throughout the 5th District, and over 2,000 Democratic and progressive activists from across the state.

“I enthusiastically endorse Chris Murphy’s candidacy for the United States Senate. As a Congressman and, before that, as a State Senator, Chris is and has always been a tireless advocate for the citizens of Connecticut. He is a proven leader on numerous issues, including banning smoking in the workplace to protect the health of our citizens and strengthening Buy American laws to grow jobs domestically. I am confident that Chris will be a strong voice in the US Senate and will continue to fight for the citizens of Connecticut and for the principles that have made America great,” said Attorney General George Jepsen.

"I am so proud to stand with my colleagues in support of Chris Murphy's bid to become Connecticut's next U.S. Senator," said Secretary of the State Denise Merrill. "From the moment I met Chris in his first days as a state representative, I was instantly impressed by his sharp intellect, his work ethic, and his courage. Chris has never shied away from the tough fights, like taking on the pharmaceutical industry to make sure working families and seniors had access to affordable prescription drugs. Chris is a visionary and he has done a stellar job representing the 5th Congressional District. I look forward to electing Chris Murphy to the Senate, because all of our state will surely benefit from his leadership."

"I'm proud to stand in support of Chris' candidacy for the U.S. Senate. Connecticut needs and deserves a Senator who is a problem solver - someone who knows how to make the wheels of Washington turn for the benefit of Connecticut residents. A dedicated public servant who has demonstrated a willingness to fight for the people of the 5th Congressional District, Chris brings new and innovative ideas to support the hopes and aspirations of working families. I've worked closely with Chris on issues of health care, workforce development, and consumer protection, and I look forward to continuing that work when he is elected as our next U.S. Senator," said Lembo.

“George, Denise and Kevin are incredible public servants for our state, and I’m so honored to have their support this early in the campaign. They are part of a growing coalition that will seamlessly stretch from the top leadership of our party down to the indespensible grassroots. As all three just won statewide office, I couldn't imagine a better team to lean on for guidance as I continue to introduce myself to people across Connecticut,” said Murphy.

Meanwhile Susan B. has sent out a list of 125 endorsers, almost all from her neck of the woods, and the most prominent being 4 DTC chairs and 2 state representatives. I'd give you a link, but the list doesn't appear on her website. In fact, almost nothing does appear there.

Is Malloy Bullying Or Merely Posturing?

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Does it make a difference really which one it is?


Jon Pelto points out the absurdity of Governor Malloy's dependence on an extra billiion dollars a year in state employee give-backs to balance his proposed budget:

Governor Malloy’s entire budget is based on state employees agreeing to make $2 billion dollars in wage and benefit concessions.

Anyone familiar with Connecticut’s state budget knows it is a number that literally cannot be achieved and the Governor purposely put out a number that is designed to fail.

Disguised as shared sacrifice, the Governor’s proposal is scapegoating of the worst kind since he has repeatedly connected his demands to the state employees with the warning that if the state employees fail to provide $1 billion in annual savings, he will be forced to shred the safety net and lay-off thousands of employees at a time the unemployment rate makes it clear that many of those laid off will not be able to find jobs.

Malloy has been very clear. If state employees don’t come up with a billion dollars in concessions - this year - the most vulnerable and needy people among us will be hurt and the fault will lie squarely with the state employees and no one else.

Even today, as the Malloy Administration and the state employee unions prepare to officially sit down for the first time, Malloy’s chief political advisor said that the “governor hopes and expects the talks to be productive and will produce the money that's necessary to help balance the budget."

The money necessary to balance the budget?

The facts could not be clearer.

Take away any and all pay raises for state employees. Institute a dozen furlough days to cut their pay by 5 percent, blow their healthcare co-pays and deductions through the roof and the budget savings comes to about $388 million next year.

Cut pay by 10% and you still don’t top $500 million in savings – far, far short of the $1 billion Malloy says he must have this year, yet alone the other $1 billion next year.

I like to believe that Malloy doesn't really mean any of this - he's just posturing for public consumption and will say, look, I tried, but we really do have to raise taxes more (on the rich!)

Jon takes a more negative view:

Saying that his budget is balanced when he knows it is not and then setting up Connecticut’s state employees to take the fall is more than a gimmick, it is nothing short of a mean-spirited form of bullying...setting up Connecticut’s state employees to become public enemy #1.

Not My Kind of Democrat

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From Jim Himes' Congressional Office:

Himes Highlighted as Centrist Legislator by National Journal

Mar 1 2011

In a ranking released this week of most conservative to most liberal Members of Congress, National Journal placed Representative Jim Himes (CT-4) among the 50 most centrist legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives. An accompanying article describes 2010 as “more polarized last year than in any other year since the rankings began.” Despite this partisan environment, Himes maintained an independent voting record that reflects the nature of Connecticut’s Fourth Congressional District.

Key Facts:
• Himes’ composite score is listed as 46% Conservative, 54% Liberal.
• Rankings were compiled from 93 key votes in 2010.

The Kennedys Are Coming

A mini-series based on the Kennedy family was originally commissioned by The History Channel. Pressure was exerted by surviving members of the family, and History passed on the project, which was then picked up by Reelz Channel. The eight part series will run beginning April 3rd.

The trailer for the series may be found here.

Energy Needs And The Collapse Of Connecticut

Energy is that stuff used to drive commerce. It is costly here in Connecticut, so we are told by suddenly cost conscious legislators. There are three ways to bring down the cost of energy: 1) the supply may be increased; 2) the demand may be reduced; 3) the attorney general may put pressure on the relevant regulatory agency to disallow price increases. The second is insufficient; the third is disruptive and laughable.

In 2000, it was thought deregulation would reduce the price of energy in Connecticut by expanding the number of suppliers offering energy to the state. To this end, a bill was produced facilitating deregulation. The two major energy producers in Connecticut, Connecticut Light & Power and United Illuminating, were asked how much the deregulation effort would cost. The cost was pegged at about $1.7 billion, and the legislature set about raising the funds to pay for deregulation. The General Assembly decided to pay the cost by issuing bonds, the bonds being securitized by a self elapsing fee attached to energy bills. The legislature also told the two Connecticut energy companies they would no longer be energy producers. Under the new arrangement, they were to become energy distributors. The bill also provided that the companies were to reduce the cost charged to their customers by 10%.

It all went swimmingly for about a year and a half. It was then discovered that the 10% decrease in the price of energy could not be sustained; that provision was adjusted to allow a 10% increase in price. Deregulation didn’t work in Connecticut, among other reasons, because the measures taken by the legislature did not significantly reduce regulations – which is what deregulation should entail. The fee the legislature attached to energy bills as surety for the bonds – really, a hidden tax – far from disappearing on schedule, was extended by the legislature, provoking Sen. Joe Markley to issue a suit to snuff the hidden tax.

Shortly thereafter, the economic house of cards came tumbling down. Nationally, former President George Bush and later current President Barack Obama decided to buy their way out of a deepening recession. Washington went into debt. The current national debt is about $15 trillion. The states went into debt. Connecticut’s budget deficit is about $3.5 billion per annum.

Connecticut quickly became number one in the nation in per capita debt. Its unfunded pension liability ballooned to between $51 to $81 billion, according to estimates provided by the Yankee Institute. The state began to use bonding to reduce its budget deficit. The bond rating agencies frowned upon the practice and lowered the state’s bond rating. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, now Sen. Dick Blumenthal, sued the bonding agencies, and his suit had the same effect on bond rates as did Xerxes whip on the rising tide. Investors are now fleeing municipal bonds. In a new report issued by Moody’s Investor Service that combines tax supported debt and pension liability figures, four states, Connecticut among them, rate highest in debt and pension funding needs

The ability of Connecticut and its hard pressed taxpayers to pay for the rising price of energy is decreasing in direct proportion to a decrease in the supply of energy. High energy costs can no longer be recouped by what has been called energy conservation. To put it in plain terms, the price of energy will not be driven down any time soon through a reduction in the use of energy – the desideratum of most conservationists, including suit happy attorneys general.

Conservationists, generally, are untroubled by higher energy prices because they perceive high prices as a means of forcing states to develop what has been called clean energy sources. When the price of a commodity increases, the high price itself forces the free market to search for and develop alternative sources such as wind power. When the price and use of a gas guzzling car exceeds the price and use of a more ecologically acceptable battery powered car, consumers will make rational choices and buy the more ecologically acceptable vehicle. High taxes at the gas pump are good, according to this view, because they nudge consumers in a less destructive direction, and the gas pump tax is a means of tipping the cost scale in the direction of green energy. Taxes, in a command economy, are used to destroy products considered harmful by political directors and construct out of whole cloth replacement industries considered beneficial.

The downside to this Eden is that governmental directors, who make economic decisions chiefly for political reason, quickly change. Unpredictable change causes flutter in free markets. Sometimes politicians quickly change their minds. Before he left office, then attorney general Richard Blumenthal changed his mind on wind turbines in Connecticut. When clean energy producer BNE Energy, Inc., recently sought to build to build two wind turbines in State Representative Vicki Nardello’s district, the Democratic co--chairwoman of the legislature’s energy committee, a clean energy enthusiast, underwent a reverse conversion and began to protest that turbines produce “flutter,” sharp disturbing slaps on the retina of light and shadow.

Indeed, “flutter” might be an appropriate word to use in connection with command economy decisions made by politicians that, in their absence, would be more efficiently and rationally made by a vigorous and competitive free market. When the “invisible hand” of the free market is replaced by such as Mr. Blumenthal and Ms. Nardello, the consequences are nearly always irrational, indeterminate, costly and ruinous to everyone but politicians and their pet industries.

Governor Malloy’s Budget Intentions

Governor Dannel Malloy announced in a meeting with his commissioners of state agencies that he would cut $2 billion from the projected annual costs of state services. Mr. Malloy proposes to eliminate 55% of the state’s deficit with spending cuts and 45% with tax increases.

Three points ought to be considered. First, the state debt Mr. Malloy hopes to discharge with his particular distribution of spending cuts to tax increases is a projected deficit. In the past, such projections have not been accurate. The final figures for the next few fiscal years may be higher.

Second, just as a man is no island unto himself but each is a part of the whole, so no state is an island unto itself. Mr. Malloy has said or implied repeatedly, both before and after his election, that his approach to budget matters will make Connecticut competitive with other states or, at the very least, will not tilt the economic playing field in favor of competing states, so that the flow of business, entrepreneurial and human capital -- most especially young people who have been fleeing the state for greener pastures elsewhere – might be reversed in Connecticut’s favor.

In this regard, it may be important to point out that the newly installed Democratic Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, has vowed to attack his state’s budget deficit without recourse to new taxes. The Cuomo plan involves closing a $10 billion budget gap by freezing wages and taxes, limiting spending growth to the rate of inflation and consolidating departments, while Mr. Malloy proposes to raise nearly $1.7 billion in new revenue. Mr. Cuomo has also proposed a cap on property taxes, setting up a fight to the death struggle between the governor and a tax thirsty state legislature.

Third, Mr. Malloy must get his budget project approved by a Democratic caucus that in the past has not been in favor of cuts adversely affecting unions credited with Mr. Malloy’s election as governor. Effective cuts of this kind would be permanent, reaching far into the future; they also would represent disinvestments in areas where the state’s growth in spending has in the past been resistant to reductions. An end to binding arbitration, for instance, would allow municipalities to control their own destinies. One supposes that measures of this kind – precisely because they would be effective in controlling future costs – would be vigorously resisted by Speaker of the House Chris Donovan, who in the past has shown himself to be unusually attentive to union interests.

Both co-chairwomen of the budget-writing Appropriations Committee, Sen. Toni Harp and Rep. Toni Walker, cautiously greeted Mr. Malloy’s announced intentions. Ms. Walker said she looked forward “to seeing where exactly those reductions will come from. We have nothing concrete yet." It is the Democratic dominated legislature that first adjusts and then sets in concrete Mr. Malloy’s budget plan.

In the meeting with his agency heads, Mr. Malloy unfurled four principles guiding his budget decisions: He would refuse to borrow money through bonding to pay down current expenses, “absolutely fund our pension obligations next year - and all years,” not rely on early retirements to cut expenses, and force state government to live within its means by changing the state “in a profound way.”

Mr. Malloy’s intentions will become clearer after he presents his budget to the Democratic dominated General Assembly. Connecticut’s red ink arises from a disproportion between revenue and spending. Debit in Connecticut has not been caused because legislators and previous governors have been uninventive in creating “tax investments” that increase revenues. The state is up to its knees in red ink because the rate of spending has increased precipitously over the last two decades following the institution of an income tax that made it possible to boost revenues and add surpluses to the general fund. Consequently, the ravenous beast that was fed got fatter – and considerably more demanding. It is now eating up the state’s seed corn.

It took the state of Connecticut about ten years to recover jobs lost during the milder recession that followed the institution of the Lowell P. Weicker Jr. Income Tax, which turned out to be a license to spend. Any solution to the disparity between getting and spending that does not PERMANENTLY reduce spending by about 25%, while holding the line on taxes during what promises to be for Connecticut a far more protracted recession, will not succeed in properly positioning the state relative to contiguous states so that, when the recession gives way to a rising tide, Connecticut’s ship of state can speed forward on the crest of the tide, rather than being stranded on a sand bar of its own making.

Malloy, Blumenthal Rule Out Declaration Of Bankruptcy

Both Connecticut's new governor, Dannel Malloy, and its new U.S. Senator, Dick Blumenthal, have put the kabosh on the possibility of bankruptcy for the state as a means of settling its deepening debts, according to Mark Davis of News Channel 8.

Mr. Blumenthal, no longer loking for someone to sue since he moved from the attorney’s general office, said "States really need to cut spending and put their fiscal houses in order without resorting to mass insolvency.”

Governor Malloy, who previously has acknowledged that Connecticut’s per capita is worse than California’s, agreeed with Mr. Blumenthal.

"Connecticut,” the governor said, “is looking to embrace, not to escape the responsibilities of sound financial management. We will honor our obligations and do not intend to support proposals that would enable states to avail themselves of bankruptcy."

Should a state declare bankruptcy, its financial obligations fallinto the hands if judges who are able to order changes in payment schedules and union contracts. Mr. Malloy has not yet said that he would be willing or able to do the same as the state marches towards bankruptcy.

"It would sort of shift the decision making from the legislature to the judicial branch, and you'd have the judicial branch overseeing the state's budget, so it certainly is a real drastic measure," said Rep. Vince Candelora, a Republican.

Mr. Davis quoted “as one person close to the leadership” as having said “We have a whole lot of agita about this, it's a political minefield."