Top Secret Budgets: Crisis, What Crisis?

Every time politicians gather together in secret sessions, journalists the world over feel a floppy emptiness in the pit of their stomachs, perhaps because they realize the justice of George Bernard Shaw’s remark: Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity.

Professional politicians are the conspirators; journalists, on the other hand, like to think of themselves as representatives of the laity.

This rule – that the public business must be conducted in the naked public square, where the tribunes of the people can keep a watchful eye on the conspirators and report back to the laity– is generally waved in around budget time. Here in Connecticut, final budgets are hammered out not in open sessions but in formerly smoke filled rooms where politicians practice their profession, the second oldest profession.

This year, as in most years, Republicans, Democrats and the reigning governor have not been able to fashion a budget while under close scrutiny by the fourth estate. There are many reasons for this, principle among them that politicians, fearful of an excess of light, like to work after hours in the dark.

Michele Jacklin, once the chief political reporter for the Hartford Courant, Connecticut’s only state-wide newspaper, who left the ink-stained wretch business to work on John DeStefano’s fruitless campaign for governor, returned to her old haunt some time ago and suggested – nay, demanded – that Gov. Jodi Rell, who claims to want to put the lid on spending, and free falling, free spending Democrats in the legislature should be put together in some formerly smoke filled room, far from the madding crowd of journalists who dog their every step, so that the warring parties may hammer out a budget acceptable to the conspirators.

No one blinked an eye at the suggestion.

And that is what is now coming to pass.

The conspirators this year have assembled at the governor’s mansion; the doors have been locked and barred; pizza has been ordered.

A monstrous combination, a cross between donkey and an elephant, will emerge at the end of these sessions. Of course, no one will like the product, no one -- not the assembled Democratic leaders, not the Republicans in the room, not Governor Jodi Rell, not the tribunes of the people, not the taxed to death laity, not even Michele Jacklin.

A “compromise” budget will be produced, a perfect conspiracy. Rolls will be reversed. Republicans will say, “We didn’t want to tax you, but we produced a pragmatic budget.” Democrats will say, “We did not want to cut necessary programs, but we have given you a pragmatic budget.” The members of some editorial boards, wearing pasteboard frowns, will say, “It had to happen this way. No one likes taxes. No one likes spending.”

Everyone will be shatteringly displeased. The last time in Connecticut the legislature and governor gathered together to discharge multi-billion dollar deficit, the laity was whacked with an income tax.

Everyone frowned for a full month.

This ancient show, this grand posturing, is beginning to wear thin, which is why tea parties and other mini-revolts are springing up everywhere in the state. The tea parties are small crucibles of people who have had enough of taxes and just aren’t going to take it any more. Connecticut, last in job growth for the past decade, is a magnet for discontent. While California’s deficit is higher, $26 billion to Connecticut’s puny $8 billion, the nutmeg state is number one in per capita debt. California’s debt will cost every person in that state around $712, New York about $918. The comparable figuring in Connecticut is a crushing $2,513, according to the Institute of Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, known for many years here in the Job Bleeding State as Taxachussetts.

Expropriating taxes from plundered quarter-millionaires, a vanishing species, the application of the usual bromides, and Band-Aid solutions ain’t gonna patch together this shattered Humpty Dumpty.

Neda and Obama’s Witness

The name Neda, here in the United States and in the world, has become pretty much a synonym for the Iranian resistance, now in a pause mode.

Neda Agha-Soltan was the beautiful young Iranian, not yet wrapped in a burka, shot by a sharpshooter in Iran, whose gruesome death was caught in a brief video seen by millions, including the president of the United States, Barack Obama.

It was that death and the iron fist of the leaders in Iran pummeling unarmed protestors that tore from Obama’s bosom this piece of prose: “The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people.”

And then Obama reached for his Martin Luther King: “Martin Luther King once said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.’ I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now we are bearing witness to the Iranian people’s belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.”

We have in Obama a referential president: These few lines contain references, obvious and implied, to Martin Luther King, protests during the Vietnam War – “The whole world is watching” – and, possibly, the Christian Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, whose name will forever be associated with the expression “witness to the truth.”

It would have been a grand idea had Obama reached for his Kierkegaard before using the words “bearing witness” and “truth” in the same sentence.

When those words were used by a eulogist in connection with a Danish bishop who had just died, Kierkegaard exploded in indignation, because he knew witnessing to the truth was a Christian category that pointed directly to the cross. Peter, crucified upside down because he felt he was not worthy to die upright in the manner of Jesus, was a witness to the truth. The bishop, whose witness consisted entirely in words – pretty and, at least in connection with Christian witnessing, entirely false -- was not. Paul, who suffered martyrdom, was a witness to the truth. The bishop, whose rhetorical witness, uncrowned with the wreath of suffering, paled in comparison with that of the early Christians, was not.

Neda, an innocent victim whose blood was poured out, was a witness to the truth; Martin Luther King was a witness to the truth.

Witnessing can never be a passive act, particularly when one is witnessing injustice. Surely, that is what Martin Luther King meant when he said the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. One bends towards justice because witnessing injustice demands a response that is clear, unambiguous and virtuous. Words, in these circumstances, are valuable as a prelude to action. But if they do not lead to corrective action, they are worse than useless. One does not bend towards justice by impassively delivering pretty speeches from one’s easy chair.

To bend towards justice is to honor justice through virtuous action. Originally, the word “virtue” pointed to moral strength, manliness, valor and worth, from the Latin root “vir,” which meant “man.” The phrase “by virtue of” preserves the word’s medieval sense of “efficacy.” It is right action that bends the moral universe into a bow.

Nothing could be plainer than the truth: the withering away of jihadism in the Middle East is in the interest not only of the United States but of the Islamic and Non-Islamic world. That is a truth to which Obama has closed his eyes, because if the truth struck him with the force of a thunderbolt, he would be spurred to action – and action involves hard choices.

The palpable truth, Thomas Jefferson said, is that “the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”

How Much?

According to a story in the Hartford Courant, the state’s US House delegation, all Democrats, voted in favor of climate change legislation that will increase the average American family’s yearly expenses by $1,500. The federal congressional budget office and the US Environmental Protection Agency estimate the yearly rise at $80 - $175 per year.

Asked to clarify the gap between the widely divergent estimates, spokesman for United Illuminating Al Carbone said "From our initial review, we don't think it's going to decrease rates. Let's put it that way.”

Let's put it this way: All regulations involve hidden costs passed along to consumers in the form of price increases. In this way regulatory costs are like business taxes, and business taxes passed along to consumers are destimulants.

What the government gives with the right hand it takes away with the left, leaving taxpayers, to quote an old saw, "holding the bag."

Bill Offered To Repeal Gravity, Colin Powell Offers A Rebuke

Last week it was reported, incorrectly as it happened, that President Barack Obama wished to pass through the US Congress a bill reversing the rotation of the earth on its axis because it had been brought to his attention, by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi some thought, that water in the toilet bowel revolves when flushed in a counter clockwise direction.

“This is intolerable,” the president reportedly said.

And, according to a report by My Way news:

Colin Powell worries that President Barack Obama is trying to tackle too many big issues at one time and he offers this advice: take a hard look at costs and consider the additional red tape that will be created.

"The right answer is, 'Give me a government that works,'" the former secretary of state said in a television interview to be aired Sunday. "Keep it as small as possible," added Powell, who said he has spoken recently with Obama and stays in touch with him. Powell, a Republican, endorsed Obama last year over the GOP presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Obama wants to overhaul the health care system and take on climate change while also helping the country emerge from the recession.

"I think one of the cautions that has to be given to the president - and I've talked to some of his people about this - is that you can't have so many things on the table that you can't absorb it all. And we can't pay for it all," Powell said.

"And I never would have believed that we would have budgets that are running into the multi-trillions of dollars, and we are amassing a huge, huge national debt that, if we don't pay for in our lifetime, our kids and grandkids and great grandchildren will have to pay for it."

Advisors surrounding the president deflected Powell’s criticism.

“Next up on the ‘to do’ list” said (never let a crisis go to waste) Rahm Immanuel “is the repeal of gravity.”

Palin’s Choice

Hell hath no fury like a media commentator whose narrative has been scorned.

This is the way things were supposed to go: Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin would abide the pelting of a pitiless storm of law suits filed by her political opponents in Alaska, all of which have been turned aside by the courts; then she was supposed to run either for president or for some other national office, at which point the pelting would begin all over again.

As the Fourth of July approached, Palin announced that she was retiring as Governor of Alaska, and shortly thereafter the speculation hit the fan.

Vain speculators on the left, a good many of whom apparently read Vanity Fair, thought that Palin resigned because she could not bear the heat pouring out of the political kitchen. The Vanity Fair article, thousands of words long, drew the veil off some of the infighting that occurred in the John McCain political camp after McCain picked Palin to run as his vice presidential candidate, on the whole not a pretty picture. With the exception of a few new snark bites, there is nothing fresh in Todd Purdum's piece, and Maureen Dowd, the New York Time’s Queen of scorn, is far better at the catty putdown than Purdum.

A sampling of Dowd’s bon bons: "Exquisite battiness... solipsistic meltdown so strange... incoherent, breathless and prickly... Sarah's country-music melodramas... girlish burbling."

Since the ascension of President Barack Obama, the left has found it inconvenient to write on national political issues.

Most of the chatter on television was devoted to two questions: Why had she done it, and is there political life after resignation? Running like a dark rumor through the chatter was the supposition that some unspeakable political faux pas had yet to be uncovered.

The answer to the second question was “probably not.” Some wiser heads with memories pointed out that other politicians had salvaged their careers after greater tragedies. In deference to Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, now suffering from a brain tumor, Chappaquiddick was not mentioned. In deference to Obama, the tax delinquencies of his Treasury Secretary remained in the commentary closet. As yet, there is no federal investigation of Sen. Chris Dodd's property in Ireland.

The vindictive prosecution of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens is a distant memory.

Last April, federal judge Emmet Sullivan formally accepted a motion to set aside a guilty verdict against former Sen.Ted Stevens of Alaska issued by President Barack Obama’s Attorney General. The presiding judge threw out the indictment, and called the case the worst case of prosecutorial misconduct he'd ever seen. The judge also initiated a criminal contempt investigation of six members of the prosecution even though an internal probe by the Office of Professional Responsibility was in process. Sullivan said he was not willing to trust it due to the "shocking and disturbing" nature of the misconduct.



Palin herself suggested 1) that her family had been unjustly pummeled before and after the campaign, both by vain politicians and consumers of Vanity Fair; 2) that she was spending an inordinate amount of money defending herself from unmerited prosecutions; 3) that she cared about Alaska’s future, and that resigning now would enable the Lieutenant Governor of that state to carry on after she had left and most likely win a future campaign in his own right, thus keeping her beloved state in Republican hands. She was resigning, Palin said, “ … so the administration could continue effectively” without her. Self sacrifice of this kind is unheard of in national politics. Palin also intimated she would be willing to go on the road to support the candidacy of grown up politicians in either party.

Point 1 was studiously ignored by the Vanity Fair crowd; everyone but some small minded bloggers on the left conceded point 2; and point 3 was opaque to the kind of political beltway commentator who believes that politics ends at the borders of Washington DC. Anyone who had spent any time commenting on state politics would have had no problem processing point 3.

So, here we have a politician who cares about her family, cares about her reputation, cares about her state, thinks some ideas are bogus while others are worth sacrificing for, and wanted to avoid the perils of federal politically inspired prosecutions.

How could there possibly be a place for her in Washington politics?

Obama Takes Hillary’s Advise on Iranian Revolution

Citing a source close to the principals, the Washington Times is reporting that “Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged President Obama for two days to toughen his language on Iran before he did so, and then was surprised when he condemned Iran's crackdown on demonstrators last week, administration officials say.

“On the one hand, he may have felt that the United States should naturally criticize the Iranian government's violent crackdown on the protesters," said Alireza Nader, an analyst at the Rand Corp. "On the other, he acknowledged that the U.S. was still willing to engage with Iran in the future. Strong U.S. criticism of the Iranian government could jeopardize future negotiations."

Mrs. Clinton agreed with the president, but she thought it was time to get tougher after the June 20 killing of a young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, on a Tehran street, officials said. A video of the killing was widely viewed on the Internet.

At the same time, they added, she was content to leave the decision to Mr. Obama, because she understood that he bore ultimate responsibility for any consequences.

The Fishwrap

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is passing around IOUs. Well after President Barack Obama’s one hundredth day in office, the nation’s unemployment rate has climbed to 9.%. Governor Jodi Rell said “No” to Connecticut’s suicidal Democrats. It's a pretty safe bet that no one either in California or Connecticut will be "living the life of Reilly" any time soon, the subject of this month's word for the day.



Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal thinks that Connecticut’s Ethics Committee attack on the Catholic Church may be unconstitutional. In East Hartford Connecticut on Tuesday, 35-year-old William Castillo succumbed to bullets. The next day on Wednesday, his friends gathered together at a candlelight vigil, and a quarrel over a dog broke out among the mourners. Three people were shot, one fatally. The good news is that police have determined that the second shooting was not in retaliation for the first.

Grandma Rell And Snow White Reconsidered

At one point in his career as a fiscal conservative transforming into a tax and spend liberal, Jim Amann, the then the Speaker of the House now running for governor, speculated that Gov. Jodi Rell’s popularity was unsinkable because the public viewed her as everyone’s grandma. When the “grandma” body-slam failed in its effect, Amann, and other Democrats, took to calling Rell ‘Snow White,’ which was even less productive.

People who know Snow White, an evocation of Eve in the garden, like her because she is snowy and white and not at all like the queen disguised as a farmer’s wife who tempts her fatally with that poisonous but tasty apple.

Amann intended his remarks as withering criticism. The intimation was that in matters of economics, an arcane and highly manipulable science, Rell was somewhat dimwitted when compared to, say, the economic propaganda minister of the Democratic Party, the academic or party functionary with a degree in Early Marx we see regularly on our TV sets waving in our faces the latest “study” showing that Connecticut, relative to other states, is actually under taxed. Not for nothing did Disraeli say that there were three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Amann’s ham fisted attack didn’t work, and it is worth considering why.

Our grandmother’s view of economics is certainly more homespun and far less self interested than the propaganda minister’s.

Gramma says: “Work hard, save money, and if you get in debt, for Heaven’s sake stop spending money. Cut up your credit cards. You may have to get another job, or move to a state where business costs are lower and jobs are more plentiful.”

This sound advice does not accommodate the tax and spend proclivities of many leading Democrats. Grandma will always and ever be a great disappointment to them.

But we know, almost instinctively, that grandma is on to something. And we also know that advice good for the goose is also good for the gander. Municipalities and states would be well advised in hard times to save money. And during lean times, The state would be well advised to stop spending money and cut up its credit card. Bonding in Connecticut is the equivalent of a state credit card.

It is not academic stuffed shirts or statistical reports written by Disraeli’s “liars” or bewitching tales told by propaganda ministers – take a bite of this pretty apple please -- that have driven these lessons home to us. It is the lashes on our back as we move through the world that has taught us the truth.

Rell also has had her problem with Republicans, who now are in a fighting mood. Republicans generally are perfectly willing to accommodate themselves to their own Grandma’s superior wisdom. However, having been bitten in the past by other faux Republicans and faux conservative Republicans -- former Gov. Lowell Weicker, who gave us the income tax, violating an implicit promise he would do no such thing, and former Gov. John Rowland, who wrested the office from Weicker’s designated gubernatorial hitter, Eunice Groark, on a promise he would devote his efforts to repealing the income tax – stalwart Republicans are just a little leery of campaign feints and dodges, not to mention the compromises past Republican governors have made to accommodate unyielding legislative leaders.

Lately, Rell has sounded grandmotherly -- in the good sense – in her opposition. She has not hesitated to call Democrat budget makers out on their failure to present a timely budget. Democrats slammed the governor for short-sheeting the bottom line on her own budget, but this was no bar for them in presenting their own, which they steadfastly declined to do.

When Democrats finally did present a budget, days before the fiscal year was to end, it was all thorn and no rose, a laughable piece of legislation that will send remaining Connecticut businesses scurrying to other states.

The two parties, Rell and the Democratic mob of legislative leaders, have now entered private negotiations. Common wisdom has it that, having put away their rhetoric, all will emerge from the secret confab with a rescue plan acceptable to all. That plan, most political watchers imagine, will be something on the order of a fifty-fifty split: a fifty percent raise in taxes and a fifty percent cut in spending to accommodate a more than $8 billion deficit.

Rell, when last heard from, wanted a plan that would position the state favorably with respect to other states.

She should stick with her grandmotherly perceptions.