The editorial board of the Hartford Courant, Connecticut’s only state-wide newspaper, waited patiently until a penalty hearing jury brought in a finding that Joshua Komisarjevsky must die by lethal injection before getting into print, only hours later, an editorial demanding the abolition of the state’s death penalty.
The editorial is only incidentally related to the case at hand, and very likely portions of it were written long before a jury of his peers decided that Mr. Komisarjevsky should be executed. It is an all-purpose declaration, suitable in every death penalty case, a suit of argumentation that will fit any body of evidence.
For instance, the editorial points to “endless reviews and appeals,” not at all uncommon in death penalty cases, and laments that both Mr. Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, earlier condemned to death by a different jury for the same crime, the murder of three women in Cheshire, “are more likely to die of old age before they are executed.”
This is true enough. There are a number of people on Connecticut’s death row whose seemingly endless appeals have so far have forestalled their execution. The gap between the commission of a murder in Connecticut, a trial, a second penalty phase trial and the execution of a death sentence is uncommonly long, bridged by seemingly endless appeals. The paper asks whether these “agonizing and expensive trials accomplish anything?”
The answer the paper is angling for is – No. Since the capital felony process in Connecticut can be subverted by seemingly endless appeals, the state should throw up its hands, concede that its death penalty is unworkable, and abolish a procedure that is unworkable, expensive, immoral and inherently unjust. The death penalty is unjust, according the editors of the Hartford Courant, because it is rooted in revenge and subject to misapplication.
Most of these objections are all purpose caveats. Each one of them begins to collapse once they are applied to the Komisarjevsky-Hayes case.
There is no question of a misapplication of the death penalty in the Komisarjevsky-Hayes multiple murder case. There is not a single member of the editorial board of the Hartford Courant who could argue persuasively before a jury of third graders that either Mr. Komisarjevsky or Mr. Hayes did not commit the crimes of which they have been accused. And while it may be argued that somewhere in the world the death penalty is even now being misapplied, that datum simply has no bearing on the Cheshire murder case.
The notion that the Komisarjevsky jury, which returned a verdict of guilty and later found in a separate penalty hearing trial that the multiple murderer should suffer execution, was motivated by vengeance is a howler that even a shameless comic would hesitate to drag on stage; this kind of special pleading, bordering on demagoguery, just ain’t funny. Vengeance, as a general, rule is swift and inexpensive; it dispenses with costly trials and retrials. Vengeance does not empanel juries to decide questions of innocence or guilty. It does not resort to penalty hearing trials. It is emotional and not deliberative. It occurs most often out of the presence of juries, judges, defense attorneys and prosecutors. These processes bear no relation to murder, and people who argue that the death penalty appropriately applied is “judicial murder,” some of them lawyers, do not understand the meaning of the word “murder” or the word “judicial” or the word “is.”
“When the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, it was with the hope that it could be administered impartially,” Courant editors write. “There is much evidence that this hope has not been met.”
No kidding?
Connecticut has executed two people in the last fifty years. Where is the evidence in either case that the death penalty in Connecticut has been administered in a partial, unjust manner? There is no such evidence.
Once the baby is thrown out with the wash water, the baby is irrecoverable. We are to abolish the death penalty because opponents of the death penalty have been successful in so prolonging the gap between non-vengeful conviction and the application of death sentences as to make capital punishment expensive and harrowing for the family victims of multiple murderers such as Komisarjevsky and Hayes. This is the real argument against capital punishment in Connecticut.
Abolition proponents who are legislators have yet to tell their constituents what punishment they would recommend in the case of a convicted murder serving a life sentence who commits a second murder in prison, or whether they think a terrorist who successfully kills hundreds of people should be spared the indignity of a non-vengeful and just public execution.
Someone should ask them.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
Teddy And Barack
In a campaign stump speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, the site of Theodore Roosevelt’s famous 1910 “new nationalism” speech, President Barack Obama threw a few flowers in the direction of the “roughrider,” the father of the modern progressive movement. And then the president bestowed on the Bull Moose president the ultimate compliment: He compared himself – slyly, indirectly – to Teddy.
Mark Twain, who thought Roosevelt a shameless fraud, was not so kind. Here is Twain erupting in a letter to the New York Times, written in 1908:
Mark Twain, who thought Roosevelt a shameless fraud, was not so kind. Here is Twain erupting in a letter to the New York Times, written in 1908:
“Astronomers assure us that the attraction of gravitation on the surface of the sun is twenty-eight times as powerful as is the force at the earth's surface, and that the object which weights 217 pounds elsewhere would weight 6,000 pounds there.In another piece on the bank panic of November 1907, Mr. Twain noted that the nation had been saved at the last moment by the millionaires Mr. Roosevelt had been excoriating in his campaign stump speeches:
“For seven years this country has lain smothering under a burden like that, the incubus representing, in the person of President Roosevelt, the difference between 217 pounds and 6,000. Thanks be we got rid of this disastrous burden day before yesterday, at last. Forever? Probably not. Probably for only a brief breathing spell, wherein, under Mr. Taft, we may hope to get back some of our health - four years. We may expect to have Mr. Roosevelt sitting on us again, with his twenty-eight times the weight of any other Presidential burden that a hostile Providence could impose upon us for our sins.
“Our people have adored this showy charlatan as perhaps no impostor of his brood has been adored since the Golden Calf, so it is to be expected that the Nation will want him back again after he is done hunting other wild animals heroically in Africa, with the safeguard and advertising equipment of a park of artillery and a brass band.”
"Last week a prodigious and universal crash was impending and but for one thing would have happened; the millionaire 'bandits' whom the president is so fond of abusing in order to get the applause of the gallery, stepped in and stayed the desolation. Mr. Roosevelt promptly claimed the credit of it, and there is much evidence that this inebriated nation thinks he is entitled to it.”
The Surplus State
Is anyone surprised that the tax increases initiated by Governor Dannel Malloy and the Democratic dominated legislature have now produced a budget surplus of nearly a half billion dollars?
When the budget was put to bed months ago, Connecticut Commentary correctly characterized the surplus it produced as an artificial surplus:
From its inception, Mr. Malloy’s budget -- a so called “shared sacrifice” plan -- was never intended to be revenue neutral.
Taking a page from former Governor Lowell Weicker, the father of Connecticut’s income tax, the current administration pegged taxes and putative “cost savings” in its budget in such a way as to produce a surplus. The Malloy administration already has distributed nearly a billion dollars of tax collections to the UConn Health Center, one of the state’s most absorbent tax sponges.
The latest figures leave state government with an additional half billion dollar surplus.
Mr. Weicker and succeeding governors folded their surpluses into the state’s spending program, which is why Connecticut’s budgets have increased threefold since the income tax was implemented. This governor differs from Weicker only in degree: his is the largest tax increase is state history.
Continuing surpluses will not be trimmed to assure no net increases in spending. They will be folded into future spending plans, and the surpluses will allow Mr. Malloy to continue to assert that relative to other states Connecticut is in “good shape.”
The state is unfortunate in having produced a string of governors who are incapable of making the proper distinction between the state – that is, the people of the state – and state government, their elected reopresentatives.
In all times, in all places, in all nations, the relationship between the people of the state and their government has ever been the same: The richer the government, the poorer the people.
The state of Connecticut, the surplus state, not at all well off; its government is flourishing.
When the budget was put to bed months ago, Connecticut Commentary correctly characterized the surplus it produced as an artificial surplus:
“Mr. Malloy passed his budget through the General Assembly without being put to the inconvenience of discussing the matter with leading Republicans who, unlike union representatives, were wholly shut out of the process. The governor’s budget figures were such as to produce what I have called in the blog and in columns an artificial surplus of about a billion dollars. Real surpluses are produced when taxes are not increased but the state never-the-less realizes an increase in revenue owing mostly to increased business activity. Mr. Malloy’s artificial surplus is now flowing into a series of crony capitalist projects. Mr. Suzio is right about the UConn Health Center: It’s a budget busting black hole the state – which is broke, broke, broke -- can little afford to support. Attaching a non-profit, non-tax generating research center to the UCHC does not make the combination more profitable. This may be the first time in Connecticut’s history that a serviceable neck has been draped around an albatross.”
From its inception, Mr. Malloy’s budget -- a so called “shared sacrifice” plan -- was never intended to be revenue neutral.
Taking a page from former Governor Lowell Weicker, the father of Connecticut’s income tax, the current administration pegged taxes and putative “cost savings” in its budget in such a way as to produce a surplus. The Malloy administration already has distributed nearly a billion dollars of tax collections to the UConn Health Center, one of the state’s most absorbent tax sponges.
The latest figures leave state government with an additional half billion dollar surplus.
Mr. Weicker and succeeding governors folded their surpluses into the state’s spending program, which is why Connecticut’s budgets have increased threefold since the income tax was implemented. This governor differs from Weicker only in degree: his is the largest tax increase is state history.
Continuing surpluses will not be trimmed to assure no net increases in spending. They will be folded into future spending plans, and the surpluses will allow Mr. Malloy to continue to assert that relative to other states Connecticut is in “good shape.”
The state is unfortunate in having produced a string of governors who are incapable of making the proper distinction between the state – that is, the people of the state – and state government, their elected reopresentatives.
In all times, in all places, in all nations, the relationship between the people of the state and their government has ever been the same: The richer the government, the poorer the people.
The state of Connecticut, the surplus state, not at all well off; its government is flourishing.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Mann’s Malloy
Ted Mann has written for the Day of New London a multipart opus on the Malloy administration that purports to be an inside look at the “malloyalists,” Mann’s term for the Brights surrounding Connecticut’s first Democratic governor in 20 years.
The difficulty with all such accounts is that embedded journalists tend to be stage managed by the principal actors in the drama. And the malloyalists are energetic stage managers. George Bernard Shaw was no admirer of autobiographies; they were all self-serving, carefully edited to show the hero of the piece in the best light. To the extent that a putatively objective piece of political drama approaches autobiography, it will be practically useless. A biography of Napoleon written by his butler might be useful, Shaw thought. But autobiographies – not so much.
An account of the Napoleonic years written by Madam DeRemusat, Lady in Waiting to the Empress Josephine, Napoleon’s cast-off wife, is useful to historians precisely because the lady, she who could not be stage managed, was not one of Napoleon’s most ardent admirers.
“Tell the truth,” Emily Dickensian said, “but tell it slant.” Truth be told, every truth is told slant, but it matters greatly who is slanting it. Would a biography of Napoleon written by Lord Nelson be more truthful than an autobiography written by Napoleon? Better to stick with the butler.
Among American journalists, Bob Woodward of Watergate fame is perhaps best known for writing embedded accounts of various administrations.
In a recent speech at the Organization for International Investment’s annual dinner at D.C.’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Thursday, Mr. Woodward told the crowd that former Vice President Al Gore was not the best conversationalist at table.
“Now, sitting next to Gore is taxing,” he said. And milking the laughing crowd, Mr. Woodward added, “In fact, it’s unpleasant.” Then Mr. Woodward, who had been criticized in some of his writings for making up conversations – to add verisimilitude to his narratives – tossed a bit of beef to the crowd.
He had asked Mr. Gore how much the public knew about what went on in the Bill Clinton administration, to which Mr. Gore responded, “About one percent,” a response that made Mr. Woodward feel “icky,” according to a report in The Hill.
“I kind of died inside and have to confess to having an unclean thought.”
Pressing on, Mr. Woodward asked Mr. Gore how much Americans would know if the former VP had written a memoir.
“Two percent,” said Mr. Gore, causing Mr. Woodward’s icky meter to implode.
There is some reportage in Mr. Mann’s account so far that will cause some eyebrows to arch. One includes an incident involving Mr. Malloy and Speaker of the House Chris Donovan. Mr. Donovan threatened to upset Mr. Malloy’s best laid budget plans by altering an understood arrangement concluded between the Malloy administration and the Democrat dominated legislature. The Malloy administration was operating on the assumption that it had a free hand to insist on further spending cuts should its deal with the unions fall apart, at which point a call came in from “Brendan Sharkey, the House majority leader, with a distressing message relayed from Chris Donovan himself.”
The House leadership, by which we are to understand Donovan, was now proposing “they tweak the language of the agreement. They want the budget bill to say that all its contents -- all those tax hikes, all the spending reductions -- are contingent on a deal with the unions,” a politically unpalatable move on the part of Mr. Donovan, who appears in Mr. Mann’s piece as a fervent pro-union politician, in opposition to Mr. Malloy, an uber-democrat who invariably has the best interests of Connecticut in mind.
In news accounts at the time, Mr. Donovan took great care to suggest that his role in the Malloy-SEBAC struggle was minimal and without consequence. Apparently, this was not true in the retelling. SEBAC is the State Employees Bargaining Agents Coalition authorized to represent unions in contractual arrangements.
Two of the malloyalists are stunned that Donovan seems incapable of understanding the political implications of the tweek. One malloyalist tells Mr. Donovan, “In my view, that is the worst-case nightmare of what it means to have Democratic government. The one thing we absolutely have to avoid, because we'll get ridden out of town on a rail, is turning over control of the budget to the state employee unions."
Mr. Donovan, now running for the U.S. House in the 5th District, very likely will be endorsed by the astonished malloyalists. They’ve had the use of him as a union foil, and in a few months the Speaker’s undemocratic attempt to thwart both the legislature and the governor will be discreetly forgotten by all except, one hopes, Mr. Malloy’s Boswell, Mr. Mann.
The difficulty with all such accounts is that embedded journalists tend to be stage managed by the principal actors in the drama. And the malloyalists are energetic stage managers. George Bernard Shaw was no admirer of autobiographies; they were all self-serving, carefully edited to show the hero of the piece in the best light. To the extent that a putatively objective piece of political drama approaches autobiography, it will be practically useless. A biography of Napoleon written by his butler might be useful, Shaw thought. But autobiographies – not so much.
An account of the Napoleonic years written by Madam DeRemusat, Lady in Waiting to the Empress Josephine, Napoleon’s cast-off wife, is useful to historians precisely because the lady, she who could not be stage managed, was not one of Napoleon’s most ardent admirers.
“Tell the truth,” Emily Dickensian said, “but tell it slant.” Truth be told, every truth is told slant, but it matters greatly who is slanting it. Would a biography of Napoleon written by Lord Nelson be more truthful than an autobiography written by Napoleon? Better to stick with the butler.
Among American journalists, Bob Woodward of Watergate fame is perhaps best known for writing embedded accounts of various administrations.
In a recent speech at the Organization for International Investment’s annual dinner at D.C.’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Thursday, Mr. Woodward told the crowd that former Vice President Al Gore was not the best conversationalist at table.
“Now, sitting next to Gore is taxing,” he said. And milking the laughing crowd, Mr. Woodward added, “In fact, it’s unpleasant.” Then Mr. Woodward, who had been criticized in some of his writings for making up conversations – to add verisimilitude to his narratives – tossed a bit of beef to the crowd.
He had asked Mr. Gore how much the public knew about what went on in the Bill Clinton administration, to which Mr. Gore responded, “About one percent,” a response that made Mr. Woodward feel “icky,” according to a report in The Hill.
“I kind of died inside and have to confess to having an unclean thought.”
Pressing on, Mr. Woodward asked Mr. Gore how much Americans would know if the former VP had written a memoir.
“Two percent,” said Mr. Gore, causing Mr. Woodward’s icky meter to implode.
There is some reportage in Mr. Mann’s account so far that will cause some eyebrows to arch. One includes an incident involving Mr. Malloy and Speaker of the House Chris Donovan. Mr. Donovan threatened to upset Mr. Malloy’s best laid budget plans by altering an understood arrangement concluded between the Malloy administration and the Democrat dominated legislature. The Malloy administration was operating on the assumption that it had a free hand to insist on further spending cuts should its deal with the unions fall apart, at which point a call came in from “Brendan Sharkey, the House majority leader, with a distressing message relayed from Chris Donovan himself.”
The House leadership, by which we are to understand Donovan, was now proposing “they tweak the language of the agreement. They want the budget bill to say that all its contents -- all those tax hikes, all the spending reductions -- are contingent on a deal with the unions,” a politically unpalatable move on the part of Mr. Donovan, who appears in Mr. Mann’s piece as a fervent pro-union politician, in opposition to Mr. Malloy, an uber-democrat who invariably has the best interests of Connecticut in mind.
In news accounts at the time, Mr. Donovan took great care to suggest that his role in the Malloy-SEBAC struggle was minimal and without consequence. Apparently, this was not true in the retelling. SEBAC is the State Employees Bargaining Agents Coalition authorized to represent unions in contractual arrangements.
Two of the malloyalists are stunned that Donovan seems incapable of understanding the political implications of the tweek. One malloyalist tells Mr. Donovan, “In my view, that is the worst-case nightmare of what it means to have Democratic government. The one thing we absolutely have to avoid, because we'll get ridden out of town on a rail, is turning over control of the budget to the state employee unions."
Mr. Donovan, now running for the U.S. House in the 5th District, very likely will be endorsed by the astonished malloyalists. They’ve had the use of him as a union foil, and in a few months the Speaker’s undemocratic attempt to thwart both the legislature and the governor will be discreetly forgotten by all except, one hopes, Mr. Malloy’s Boswell, Mr. Mann.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Technoautocracy
Just as in the modern world the opposite of “bankruptcy” is “bailout," so the opposite of “democracy” is not "dictatorship" but “technoautocracy.”
During the great financial blow-out that occurred at the end of the Bush regime, continuing into the Obama years, while the U.S. Congress was debating whether or not to bail out too big to fail banks with a $700 billion blank check, financial technocrats were slipping $7.7 trillion to Wall Street under the table. Since none of the technocrats were elected to office, none of them had to worry overmuch about angry constituents, and no explanations were forthcoming – or even necessary.
In 2009, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg news, members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, unelected technoautocrats authorized to dictate monetary policy in the United States, passed along to Wall Street’s biggest players $7.7 trillon in no-strings-attached, super low interest loans.
In a stunning commentary, Tom Hartman notes:
Ross Dothat, another commentator, notes that technoautorcracy is in the process of being internationalized:
ADDENDA
According to a later Reuter’s report, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has disputed the $7.7 trillion figure.
“Mr. Bernanke has written to lawnmakers "that the figure and other estimates of larger total amounts of lending, were ‘wildly inaccurate.’ On any given day, Fed credit from its emergency liquidity programs was never more than about $1.5 trillion, he said.
"’These articles ... have contained a variety of egregious errors and mistakes,’ Bernanke told the chairmen of the U.S. Senate Banking and House of Representatives Financial Services committees."
Bloomberg stands by its initial story
During the great financial blow-out that occurred at the end of the Bush regime, continuing into the Obama years, while the U.S. Congress was debating whether or not to bail out too big to fail banks with a $700 billion blank check, financial technocrats were slipping $7.7 trillion to Wall Street under the table. Since none of the technocrats were elected to office, none of them had to worry overmuch about angry constituents, and no explanations were forthcoming – or even necessary.
In 2009, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg news, members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, unelected technoautocrats authorized to dictate monetary policy in the United States, passed along to Wall Street’s biggest players $7.7 trillon in no-strings-attached, super low interest loans.
In a stunning commentary, Tom Hartman notes:
“Six of the nation's biggest banks - like Morgan Stanley and Bank of America - pocketed a not-too-shabby $13 billion in undisclosed profits, thanks to the deal with the Technocrats at the Fed. So today - thanks to a decision made by technocrats - and not politicians - the too-big-to-fail banks are even bigger - and Wall Street has raked in more profits in just the last 30 months - then they did in the entire 8 years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis.”
Ross Dothat, another commentator, notes that technoautorcracy is in the process of being internationalized:
"For the inhabitants of Italy and Greece, who have just watched democratically elected governments toppled by pressure from financiers, European Union bureaucrats, and foreign heads of state, it evokes the cold reality of 21st-century politics. Democracy may be nice in theory, but in a time of crisis it's the technocrats who really get to call the shots. National sovereignty is a pretty concept, but the survival of the European common currency comes first."
ADDENDA
According to a later Reuter’s report, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has disputed the $7.7 trillion figure.
“Mr. Bernanke has written to lawnmakers "that the figure and other estimates of larger total amounts of lending, were ‘wildly inaccurate.’ On any given day, Fed credit from its emergency liquidity programs was never more than about $1.5 trillion, he said.
"’These articles ... have contained a variety of egregious errors and mistakes,’ Bernanke told the chairmen of the U.S. Senate Banking and House of Representatives Financial Services committees."
Bloomberg stands by its initial story
Friday, December 2, 2011
Inside Crony Capitalism
Wall Street, or at least that portion of it that writes editorials for the Wall Street Journal, is not, members of “Occupy Wall Street” may be happy to learn, on friendly terms with greedy Crony Capitalists.
The Crony Capitalist is the politically connected “entrepreneur” who finances risky ventures with taxpayer’s money so that, when the venture goes belly-up, the risks will be borne by taxpayers rather than private investors. When and if the company succeeds, of course, the profits will flow their way. It’s a win-win situation for crony capitalists because its financier is Uncle Sam.
The “bank” that supplies Crony Capitalists with their ill-gotten investment funds is the U.S. government, which also happens to be the national tax-collector-in-chief. Lord Acton, who said that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” should have lived to see the day that Solyndra, the green energy company that was given a half billion dollars in tax money, went belly-up.
Following Solyndra’s inevitable crack-up, the handful of congressmen interested in bridling run-away spending had an opportunity to take a gander at e-mails flowing back and forth between officials in President Barack Obama’s administration and the spendthrifts in Solyndra, and they do not paint a pretty picture. The crack-up was inevitable because the cost to produce Solyndra’s product, solar panels, exceeded the price Solyndra was charging for their product. This way lies ruin, as any 12-year-old lemonade stand vendor would have been able to advise the “investors” in Mr. Obama’s administration.
In April 2010, a month after PriceWaterhouseCoopers raised a red flag concerning Solyndra’s solvency, a staffer in the White House Office of Management and Budget telegraphed his fears. The Department of Energy (DOE), he wrote, “has one loan to monitor and they seem completely oblivious." Another red flag waver said it was “terrifying" to consider that some of DOE's next projects would make Solyndra look "better, according to the WSJ report. Rumbles were heard among Mr. Obama’s insiders as well. Venture capitalist and Obama donor Steve Westly, communicating with White House Aide Valerie Jarret in May, said “many of us believe the company's cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term." She wrote to Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, who touched base with the DOE. An official there relayed the calming message, “We believe the company is okay in the medium term, but will need some help of one kind or another down the road."
The back and forth between Mr. Klain and Ms. Jarret is wonderfully obtuse. Far from launching a serious preview of Solyndra’s viability, Mr. Klain advised Ms. Jarrett that he supported a pending visit of the president to Solyndra even though there were “risk factors” involved. “It looks like it’s OK to me,” Mr. Klain wrote Ms. Jarrett, “but if you feel otherwise, let me know.” Ms. Jarrett did not feel otherwise, and she let Mr. Klain know, “I’m comfortable if you're comfortable," to which Mr. Klain responded, “The reality is that if POTUS (the President of the United States) visited 10 such places over the next 10 months, probably a few will be belly-up by election day 2012—but that to me is the reality of saying that we want to help promote cutting edge, new economy industries."
Obama administration officials may have wrongly supposed that even this crisis need not have gone to waste. Republicans in the coming election will make full use in their campaign advertising of the visit the president and vice president made to Solyndra, as well as clips taken from testimony before the U.S. congress in which failed Solyndra mucky-mucks are shown rather stiffly asserting their right under the constitution not to disclose to congress information that may incriminate them. A house hearing on the issue may provide other juicy tidbits.
Crony Capitalism lies at the root of the Solyndra scandal, curled around the base of the Obama administration like a serpent coiled around a tempting apple tree.
State houses, it should be noted, are also prone to the allure of Crony Capitalists. Solyndra was a green feather in Mr. Obama’s campaign cap, and the company never minded renting taxpayer resources to cover its economic failings. Governors elsewhere have yielded to similar temptations to boost their popularity. The way up is always exhilarating just before the fall.
The Crony Capitalist is the politically connected “entrepreneur” who finances risky ventures with taxpayer’s money so that, when the venture goes belly-up, the risks will be borne by taxpayers rather than private investors. When and if the company succeeds, of course, the profits will flow their way. It’s a win-win situation for crony capitalists because its financier is Uncle Sam.
The “bank” that supplies Crony Capitalists with their ill-gotten investment funds is the U.S. government, which also happens to be the national tax-collector-in-chief. Lord Acton, who said that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” should have lived to see the day that Solyndra, the green energy company that was given a half billion dollars in tax money, went belly-up.
Following Solyndra’s inevitable crack-up, the handful of congressmen interested in bridling run-away spending had an opportunity to take a gander at e-mails flowing back and forth between officials in President Barack Obama’s administration and the spendthrifts in Solyndra, and they do not paint a pretty picture. The crack-up was inevitable because the cost to produce Solyndra’s product, solar panels, exceeded the price Solyndra was charging for their product. This way lies ruin, as any 12-year-old lemonade stand vendor would have been able to advise the “investors” in Mr. Obama’s administration.
In April 2010, a month after PriceWaterhouseCoopers raised a red flag concerning Solyndra’s solvency, a staffer in the White House Office of Management and Budget telegraphed his fears. The Department of Energy (DOE), he wrote, “has one loan to monitor and they seem completely oblivious." Another red flag waver said it was “terrifying" to consider that some of DOE's next projects would make Solyndra look "better, according to the WSJ report. Rumbles were heard among Mr. Obama’s insiders as well. Venture capitalist and Obama donor Steve Westly, communicating with White House Aide Valerie Jarret in May, said “many of us believe the company's cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term." She wrote to Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, who touched base with the DOE. An official there relayed the calming message, “We believe the company is okay in the medium term, but will need some help of one kind or another down the road."
The back and forth between Mr. Klain and Ms. Jarret is wonderfully obtuse. Far from launching a serious preview of Solyndra’s viability, Mr. Klain advised Ms. Jarrett that he supported a pending visit of the president to Solyndra even though there were “risk factors” involved. “It looks like it’s OK to me,” Mr. Klain wrote Ms. Jarrett, “but if you feel otherwise, let me know.” Ms. Jarrett did not feel otherwise, and she let Mr. Klain know, “I’m comfortable if you're comfortable," to which Mr. Klain responded, “The reality is that if POTUS (the President of the United States) visited 10 such places over the next 10 months, probably a few will be belly-up by election day 2012—but that to me is the reality of saying that we want to help promote cutting edge, new economy industries."
Obama administration officials may have wrongly supposed that even this crisis need not have gone to waste. Republicans in the coming election will make full use in their campaign advertising of the visit the president and vice president made to Solyndra, as well as clips taken from testimony before the U.S. congress in which failed Solyndra mucky-mucks are shown rather stiffly asserting their right under the constitution not to disclose to congress information that may incriminate them. A house hearing on the issue may provide other juicy tidbits.
Crony Capitalism lies at the root of the Solyndra scandal, curled around the base of the Obama administration like a serpent coiled around a tempting apple tree.
State houses, it should be noted, are also prone to the allure of Crony Capitalists. Solyndra was a green feather in Mr. Obama’s campaign cap, and the company never minded renting taxpayer resources to cover its economic failings. Governors elsewhere have yielded to similar temptations to boost their popularity. The way up is always exhilarating just before the fall.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
The Sinkhole State
In any tousle between business and government, business usually has the last word, and more often than not the word is, “We’re outta here.”
Sikorsky Aircraft, a Connecticut company of long standing, has initiated two rounds of job cuts.
Early in 2010, Sikorsky President Jeff Pino, “under marching orders to raise the division's profits,” according to a news story, boasted to stock analysts, “We've nearly tripled the amount of direct production labor hours from 2006 to 2009. And for the first time in the history of our company, more than half of our hours are outside of Connecticut. We're very proud of that because outside of Connecticut, as I told you last year, by definition is low-cost sourcing."
Having met his goal of a 10 percent profit margin in 2010, Pino presently is aiming for 14 percent by 2014.
Playing its strategy close to its vests, company officials declined to share details of the cost saving cuts with Connecticut’s Democratic congressional delegation. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, for instance, was not apprised of the details of the earlier September cuts, which included the elimination of 567 positions, 419 of which were in Connecticut. In the first round, 384 hourly members of the Teamsters union were let go.
In the current round, the company hopes to reach its goal of about 525 workers. No details of the cuts were shared with Mrs. DeLauro.
The company may be suffering from post-Attorney General Richard Blumenthal syndrome. Before he hopped to the U.S. Senate from his suit stained position as attorney general, Mr. Blumenthal intervened on behalf of union workers at Pratt&Whitney, a company that like Sikorsky operates under the aegis of United Technology (UTC), successfully if temporarily averting layoffs. Unfortunately for Mr. Blumenthal and workers in the vast beehive of United Technology, cost savings lost in one UTC company is often recovered in another.
Of UTC’s 205,000 global employees, 26,000 work in Connecticut, the majority of them at Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky and Hamilton Sundstrand. Employees at Pratt & Whitney have diminished over the past two decades from 15,000 to 3,700.
Mr. Pino is not alone in thinking that Connecticut is a forbidding place in which to do business. Last February, while speaking at a Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce breakfast, CEO of Aetna Mark Bertolini told the group, “We've done the analysis, and, quite frankly, Connecticut falls very, very low on the list as an environment to locate employees . . . in large part because of the tax structure, the cost of living, which is now approaching, all in, the cost of locating an employee in New York City.”
Rising above critics of his administration, Governor Dannel Malloy was last Thursday, according to a press release, “a featured panelist at the Bloomberg Hedge Funds Summit, where he will speak about his efforts to generate growth in the state’s financial services industry and attract new businesses and jobs to the state”– this barely week after the non-partisan Institute for Truth in Accounting (IFTA) tagged Connecticut as a “sinkhole state,” one of the five worst states in the nation:
Mr. Malloy, the architect of the largest tax increase in Connecticut’s history, which included a painful income tax hike retroactive to January, has done very little to control spending, Connecticut’s most pressing problem. And even some of the governor’s putative “savings” have been costly. The state will realize virtually no savings from a budget item requiring state workers to accept a provision requiring medical exams. Workers who declined the states’ offer were to pay a penalty fee that appeared in the budget ledger as a savings. But -- big surprise! – fully 90 percent of the state workforce chose to participate in the plan, and the projected saving vanished. The Office of Fiscal Analysis continues to insist, ad infinitum, that it cannot assess savings components of the budget approved last May. The office has been advising the administration and the Democratic controlled legislature since May that lacks the requisite information to confirm that a union concession deal concocted between the Malloy administration and SEBAC officials will provide nearly $2 billion in savings over two years.
One needn’t wonder whether Mr. Malloy will make use of such data in any of his future reports to business leaders. It hardly matters. Real job producers and business entrepreneurs have already read the signs of the times. Expected cuts in defense contracts, the continuing temptation on the part of left of center legislators to increase taxes on entrepreneurial capital, the possible crack-up of the Eurozone, the increase in crippling regulations authored by former senator – now Hollywood mogul -- Chris Dodd and soon to be former U.S. House Rep. Barney Frank, the continuing housing market blow-out midwifed by the same two culprits, the never-ending bailouts of companies not permitted to go bankrupt … all this and more will punch massive holes in state and federal budgets, at which point some Greece-like states, "sinkhole states," will have no choice but to slash spending – because no one will be able to afford tax increases.
We’ve been there, done that. And we’re still broke.
Sikorsky Aircraft, a Connecticut company of long standing, has initiated two rounds of job cuts.
Early in 2010, Sikorsky President Jeff Pino, “under marching orders to raise the division's profits,” according to a news story, boasted to stock analysts, “We've nearly tripled the amount of direct production labor hours from 2006 to 2009. And for the first time in the history of our company, more than half of our hours are outside of Connecticut. We're very proud of that because outside of Connecticut, as I told you last year, by definition is low-cost sourcing."
Having met his goal of a 10 percent profit margin in 2010, Pino presently is aiming for 14 percent by 2014.
Playing its strategy close to its vests, company officials declined to share details of the cost saving cuts with Connecticut’s Democratic congressional delegation. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, for instance, was not apprised of the details of the earlier September cuts, which included the elimination of 567 positions, 419 of which were in Connecticut. In the first round, 384 hourly members of the Teamsters union were let go.
In the current round, the company hopes to reach its goal of about 525 workers. No details of the cuts were shared with Mrs. DeLauro.
The company may be suffering from post-Attorney General Richard Blumenthal syndrome. Before he hopped to the U.S. Senate from his suit stained position as attorney general, Mr. Blumenthal intervened on behalf of union workers at Pratt&Whitney, a company that like Sikorsky operates under the aegis of United Technology (UTC), successfully if temporarily averting layoffs. Unfortunately for Mr. Blumenthal and workers in the vast beehive of United Technology, cost savings lost in one UTC company is often recovered in another.
Of UTC’s 205,000 global employees, 26,000 work in Connecticut, the majority of them at Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky and Hamilton Sundstrand. Employees at Pratt & Whitney have diminished over the past two decades from 15,000 to 3,700.
Mr. Pino is not alone in thinking that Connecticut is a forbidding place in which to do business. Last February, while speaking at a Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce breakfast, CEO of Aetna Mark Bertolini told the group, “We've done the analysis, and, quite frankly, Connecticut falls very, very low on the list as an environment to locate employees . . . in large part because of the tax structure, the cost of living, which is now approaching, all in, the cost of locating an employee in New York City.”
Rising above critics of his administration, Governor Dannel Malloy was last Thursday, according to a press release, “a featured panelist at the Bloomberg Hedge Funds Summit, where he will speak about his efforts to generate growth in the state’s financial services industry and attract new businesses and jobs to the state”– this barely week after the non-partisan Institute for Truth in Accounting (IFTA) tagged Connecticut as a “sinkhole state,” one of the five worst states in the nation:
“It is one of five states in the worst financial position in the country. According to research conducted by IFTA, while Connecticut has $29.4 billion worth of assets, only $10.1 billion are available to pay $63.4 billion of bills as they come due. IFTA's research also indicates each taxpayer's financial burden is $41,200.”
Mr. Malloy, the architect of the largest tax increase in Connecticut’s history, which included a painful income tax hike retroactive to January, has done very little to control spending, Connecticut’s most pressing problem. And even some of the governor’s putative “savings” have been costly. The state will realize virtually no savings from a budget item requiring state workers to accept a provision requiring medical exams. Workers who declined the states’ offer were to pay a penalty fee that appeared in the budget ledger as a savings. But -- big surprise! – fully 90 percent of the state workforce chose to participate in the plan, and the projected saving vanished. The Office of Fiscal Analysis continues to insist, ad infinitum, that it cannot assess savings components of the budget approved last May. The office has been advising the administration and the Democratic controlled legislature since May that lacks the requisite information to confirm that a union concession deal concocted between the Malloy administration and SEBAC officials will provide nearly $2 billion in savings over two years.
One needn’t wonder whether Mr. Malloy will make use of such data in any of his future reports to business leaders. It hardly matters. Real job producers and business entrepreneurs have already read the signs of the times. Expected cuts in defense contracts, the continuing temptation on the part of left of center legislators to increase taxes on entrepreneurial capital, the possible crack-up of the Eurozone, the increase in crippling regulations authored by former senator – now Hollywood mogul -- Chris Dodd and soon to be former U.S. House Rep. Barney Frank, the continuing housing market blow-out midwifed by the same two culprits, the never-ending bailouts of companies not permitted to go bankrupt … all this and more will punch massive holes in state and federal budgets, at which point some Greece-like states, "sinkhole states," will have no choice but to slash spending – because no one will be able to afford tax increases.
We’ve been there, done that. And we’re still broke.
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