Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

The road taken by Governor Dannel Malloy in providing specific businesses with disappearing tax breaks and other temporary business incentives is not the road less taken. Most recently, President Barack Obama provided Solyndra with millions in tax dollars because Mr. Obama wished to encourage the production of green energy. The problem was that the product made by Solyndra was underpriced – the sale price of Solyndra’s solar panels was less than the cost of production -- and it is only a slight exaggeration to say that company bigwigs, after successfully pressing the administration hard multiple times for tax subsidies, took the money and ran. The Solyndra drama is still unfolding. Called to testify before a congressional committee, the top dogs at the bankrupt company took the fifth, and not because they feared they might in their testimony betray their company’s trade secrets. The captains of this industry were trying to avoid jail time. The practice of enticing a company to prod...

From the Daily Cardinal , a University of Wisconsin paper: “A neighboring hotel's staff alleged voiced concerns about having to recently escort hotel employees to and from bus stops late at night due to inappropriate behavior, such as public masturbation, from street protesters. “In addition, officials agreed further occupation should not be allowed to continue without restrooms on site to avoid further public health violations. "’You can't be affecting the safety and health of other people around you,’ Madison Fire Prevention Officer Jerry McMullen said. ‘With the public health violations and the complaints I've heard, I don't believe it meets the spirit of the ordinance to a street use permit.’" In Manchester, New Hampshire, the Union Leader reports: “A city woman is accused of pimping a 16-year-old girl she met in Victory Park during the Occupy NH demonstrations.” Hardy protestors in Providence Rhode Island preparing to confront an early winter st...

Duane Billington, a retired engineering technician and civic activist from Naples, “fought for 18 months against Jackson Laboratory's plan to expand in Florida,” according to a story in the Hartford Courant .” Ultimately Mr. Billington was successful. Jackson Laboratory pulled up their negotiating stakes in Florida. Governor Dannel Malloy’s chief of staff, Roy Occhiogrosso, read about the failed attempt to pitch the deal to Florida in a newspaper, evidentially shared the information with his boss, and a contingent from Connecticut was sent to Bar Harbor Maine to negotiate a deal with Jackson Laboratory administrators. The Courant story does not mention the names of members of the Connecticut contingent sent to negotiate with Jackson. The deal apparently was consummated and a letter of intent was signed between the parties. When two members of the General Assembly, Senator Len Suzio and Senate Republican leader Leonard Fasano, asked to see the memorandum of understanding betwe...

What might be called Connecticut’s social gospel is prospering under the hand of progressive Governor Dannel Malloy. Should anyone doubt that Mr. Malloy is a born again progressive, he has only to pay heed to remarks the governor made at a progressive panel discussion in Washington D.C., the epicenter of modern Democratic progressivism. When president CEO of the Center for American Progress John Podesta, former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, asked Mr. Malloy to display his progressive credentials, the governor unscrolled a partial list that included: • The passage of Connecticut’s new earned income tax credit program • The decriminalization of marijuana use in small portions, “the third most robust of its kind in the country,” according to CTNewsJunkie • The passage of a law providing in-state public college tuition rates to undocumented Connecticut students • A new law outlawing discrimination against transgendered individuals • The implementation w...

Jackson Laboratory has found some important friends in high places in Connecticut. Among them are Governor Dannel Malloy and, almost certainly, the Democratic caucus in the General Assembly, which has tended thus far to march to the music of Mr. Malloy’s drum on all issues of importance. Here and there, critics of the deal privately arranged between the governor and Jackson have surfaced. “Republicans,” one commentator wrote , “are right to question the deal and get as much information as possible. But by the experts’ accounts, this is a good risk for Connecticut. And as in so many other ways, Connecticut should not be like Florida.” Jackson was considering a move to Florida, but the deal in that state was never consummated. It has become part of the narrative of Connecticut Democrats supporting the deal that the governor of Florida failed to engage in the negotiations and so the state lost out on a promising deal that a wide awake Connecticut governor thereafter snatched from Flor...

THERE WILL BE NO POSTINGS TO THIS BLOG IN NOVEMBER Q: Whither the Connecticut Republican Party? A: It’s good question. I put up a blog recently that was a review of a Chris Shays interview with Dennis House on “Face the State.” Mr. House asked Mr. Shays whether he thought Connecticut had drifted so far to the left as to make it impossible for Republicans to win a seat in the U.S. Congress. Mr. Shays is running as a Republican for Senator Joe Lieberman’s seat. Mr. Shays said “Absolutely,” he thought the state had moved very far to the left. The blog produced a response from Jon Kantrowitz, a liberal commentator who is himself an articulate unabashed progressive. “By the way,” Mr. Kantrowitz wrote, “it's true - the state has gone too far to the left to elect a Republican - and thank goodness for that!” There are some few Republicans about who are not as thankful as Mr. Kantrowitz, though it is difficult to disagree with the major premise of his proposition -- namely that ...

In the course of his interview with former State Rep. Chris Shays, host of Face the State Dennis House pressed Mr. Shays on a series of issues. A transcript of portions of the interview follows below, accompanied by some Connecticut Commentary notes. Dennis House (DH): So, you’re planning on a primary, regardless of the convention in May, right? Chris Shays (CS): There will be a primary. If I win the convention, I assume others will want to primary; and if I don’t win the convention, I’m in a primary. This is a pretty straightforward declaration of Shays’ intentions. It is not altogether certain that Linda McMahon would primary should Mr. Shays be declared the Republican convention nominee. In her last run for the U.S. Senate, Mrs. McMahon snatched the convention nomination from former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons, who went on to wage an on-again off again campaign against her. DH: If you lose in a primary, would you run as an independent? CS: Well, I don’t think about losing, but I’...

Cain Leads UnAble Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain is now leading President Barack UnAble by a slender 3 point margin in the latest Rasmussen poll . Obama Says No, Yes Campaign pepper coursing through his veins, President Barack Obama has announced that he is against the repeal of his health laws long term CLASS Act (don’t ask), despite the prior announcement by his government that the program was dead in the water, according to The Hill . Demagogueing The Dirt There are two governing plans before the American people President Barack Obama told a group of people who had come to hear the president spread sweetness and light on the campaign trail : "My plan says we’re going to put teachers back in the classrooms, construction workers back to work. Tax cuts for small businesses, tax cuts for hiring veterans, tax cuts if you give your workers a raise – that’s my plan. "The Republicans plan, boils down to this: Dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with...

In a potentially explosive Hartford Courant story , reporter Josh Kovner discloses that no fewer than seven – possibly more – lawsuits claiming sexual harassment and workplace retaliation by UConn Health Center administrators have been filed against that part of the UCHC branch that provides mental-health and medical services to the state prison system. Two women involved in two of the cases, Mr. Kovner reports, “both seasoned clinical social workers at different high-security prisons, said that nothing an inmate ever did or said to them ever made them feel as uncomfortable and compromised as did the actions of a UConn correctional health care manager or a co-worker.” The cluster of law suits filed between mid-May and September, Mr. Kovner reports, “is the largest cluster of employment cases to hit management at Correctional Managed Health Care since the UConn Health Center first assumed the no-bid contract with the Department of Correction in the mid-1990s. The contract, now hover...

Juries, occasionally rising above the deadening process of the law, will engage in what lawyers call jury nullification. Jury nullification involves putting aside process in favor of justice. Instead of ruling as a judge or the law might wish, a jury occasionally will throw process to the wind and bring in a surprising verdict. Death penalty opponents in Connecticut, some of whom are leaders in the General Assembly and the judicial system, have for the past few decades been practicing what might be called capital felony process nullification. The idea is effectively to vacate jury findings by absurdly extending the legal process in death penalty cases. Such jurists and legislators, reasoning that the death penalty is an abomination – even in cases in which it may be justly applied, such as in multiple murder cases or cases in which a capital felon already sentenced to life in prison takes a life in prison or in terrorist cases or in cases in which the crime is especially heinous – ...

Tom Dudchik’s popular site, Capitol Report , featured a picture of Democratic Connecticut Govern Dannel Malloy side by side with an accompanying picture of Republican Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman. Mr. Malloy looks a little stern and sour, lips pursed, jaw jutted forward, rather as if he had just told the leaders of SEBAC that they would have to wait on their Cost of Living Increases for a couple of years, while fighting off as he did so an army of benighted tax resistors still smarting from the largest tax increase in Connecticut’s history. Mr. Heineman, on the other hand, appears relaxed and expansive. The title below the pics reads, in an assertive font: CAPITOL REPORT RAISE’EM; CUT’EM The lede on another report was not cheery: “In Nebraska, Republican Gov. Dave Heineman enacted the biggest tax cut in state history, and the state's unemployment rate of 4.2 percent is now the second lowest in the nation. “In Connecticut, Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy enacted the largest ...

U.S. Congressman Charlie Rangel, noted progressive and tax evader, compliments fellow congressman John Larson on his discernment in supporting the “Occupy Wall Street” movement : “It is truly historic when we see union groups, leaders like Minority Whip Steny Hoyer and House Democratic Caucus Chairman John B. Larson, and fellow Members in the Congressional Progressive Caucus all come out in favor of the Occupy Wall Street movement. This new wave of support gives me renewed hope that we can bring about change in America.” Prowling around the periphery of the movement are a few Ron Paul supporters such as Chris One supposes that neither Mr. Rangel nor Mr. Larson supports Chris’ fervently expressed attack on the Washington Industrial complex. The beat goes on.

Former U.S. Rep. Chris Shays spoke at Yale early in October shortly after he filed papers to kick off his candidacy for a seat in the U.S. Senate. The following citation is taken from the October 7th issue of the Yale Daily News : “Shays is known as a leader among centrist Republicans and an advocate of socially moderate views. He defended his moderate position by saying that ‘a party needs to be broad enough to allow a representative to represent his or her entire district.’ Because his district is moderate to conservative, Shays said that it is his duty to encompass the views of all the people.” In the state of Connecticut, Democrats outnumber Republicans about two to one, and so called independents or unaffiliated voters outnumber Democrats by a slight margin. Given these statistics, Mr. Shay’s notion of representation – namely, that it is “the duty a representative to encompass the views of all the people” – would necessarily impel him to vote the Democratic line on bills in pro...

The Solyndra energy scandal is beginning to ripen. ABC News is now reporting that a top fundraiser for President Barack Obama who was hired to help oversee the administration’s energy loan program “pushed and prodded career Department of Energy officials to move faster in approving a loan guarantee for Solyndra, even as his wife's law firm was representing the California solar company, according to internal emails made public late Friday.” And here in Connecticut, Jon Lender of the Hartford Courant is reporting that the wife of state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) commissioner Daniel Esty, Mrs. Elizabeth Esty, a former state representative now running for the U.S. Congress, has received campaign contributions from Northeast Utilities, an energy company regulated by her husband: “With controversy already enveloping the $205,000 in consulting work that Daniel C. Esty did for Northeast Utilities before he became commissioner of the state Department of...

U.S Rep. John Larson, who likely will be at his post in Connecticut’s 1st District long after Hell freezes over, has given an exclusive interview to the Daily Caller   that is, to put it charitably, incoherent. Larson addressed a group of activist and journalists from Egypt and Tunisia on October 4 and later gave an exclusive interview to reporter Vince Coglianese of the Daily Caller in the course of which he said that the United States had drawn inspiration from their countries. It is required on such occasions to throw rhetorical bouquets in the direction of the audience. Mr. Larson continued to advise the activists that as a result of their exertions the United States, considered by some to be a crucible of constitutional revolution, is experiencing its own “Arab Spring, if you will.” The Arab Spring in the United States was occurring on Wall Street even as he spoke. The “Occupy Wall Street” protest is now in its second week, and plans are afoot to plant sprigs of the coming...

A recent poll by Public Policy Polling indicates that Chris Shays may have a certain value, among Democrats mostly, as a spoiler candidate. The poll shows Linda McMahon leading former U.S. Rep. Shays in a Republican Party primary by an unsurpassable margin of 60-27 percent. Since primaries were first introduced into party politics, more or less as a democratic instrument to pry decision making from party bosses, primaries have been the gateway to general elections. The 60-27 spread is a hurdle that would inspire second thoughts among most supermen politicians who are used to leaping tall buildings in a single bound. The spread among those in the state identifying themselves as “very conservative”, 81-14, is even more daunting. Is it possible that Mr. Shays has agreed to play Rob Simmons to Mrs. McMahon in her second bid for the U.S. Senate? Very early in the campaign for U.S. Senator Chris Dodd’s seat, Mr. Simmons was leading the senator in some polls. Mr. Dodd’s prospects...

You’re a rich girl, and you’ve gone too far Cause you know it don’t matter anyway You can rely on the old man’s money You can rely on the old man’s money -- Hall and Oats Song Human Events is preparing a story that may involve self-dealing on the part of 3rd District congresswoman Rosa Delauro and her husband Stanley Greenberg, whose firm, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, has done business with powerful beltway politicians. Mr. Greenberg, the CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, boasts that his firm “is one of the world's premier research and strategic consulting firms. Beyond data, we provide the strategic insight necessary to develop the right messages to achieve our clients' goals. Smarter, faster and committed to our clients' interests: we work harder and think deeper than the rest.” A list of Greenberg's political clients includes such  shakers and movers within the Democratic Party as President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Vice President Walter Mondale and ...