The Hill, a much respected Washington D.C. publication, reports
that Senator Dick Blumenthal, “not a businessman by trade,” has never-the-less
acquired a fortune by “his marriage to the daughter of a New York real estate magnate.”
His marriage has given Mr. Blumenthal “an impressive investment portfolio.”
Mr. Blumenthal is not alone among Connecticut’s Democratic
politicians in having acquired fortunes through family members. U.S.
Representative Rosa DeLauro, married to pollster and consultant to Democratic
political stars Stan Greenberg, also falls within the bounds of Connecticut’s
millionaire one-percenter politicians.
Mr. and Mrs. Greenberg are good friends with President
Barack Obama confederate Rham Emanuel, now the mayor of Chicago. Mr. Emanuel, then down and out in Washington
D.C., lived for a time in the basement of the Greenbergs’ plush Beltway digs.
Mr. Greenberg was Mr. Emanuel’s pollster before the “godfather” of the Obama
political campaign became mayor of one of the worst gang infested and violent
cities in the United States. Mr.
Greenberg’s well-heeled, prosperous, politically connected polling and research
firm, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, has conducted polls and run political
interference for such Democratic notables as former President Bill Clinton, inventor
of the internet and global warming guru former Vice President Al Gore and anti-Vietnam
war protestor, former U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and present Secretary of
State John Kerry. Mr. Greenberg’s firm also dabbles in international affairs’ a
partial listing of Mr. Greenberg’s international clients may be found here.
The conspicuously rich former Connecticut Senator and
Governor Lowell Weicker, heir to the Squib fortune, was born with a 24k spoon
in his mouth. Relatively poor while in office, former U.S. Senator Chis Dodd
fell into a vat of money only after he had left Congress. Mr. Dodd, having said
multiple times in office that he would not descend to lobbying, is now the chief
lobbyist for The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), pulling in more
than $2 million a year. Recently, Mr. Dodd’s days have been taken up with a
controversy concerning the title of “The Butler,” a new film that explores
racism, or the lack of it, within the White House during the Civil Rights
period.
Mr. Dodd’s MPAA recently averted a head on collision between
Warner Brothers, the makers of a 1916 film titled “The Butler” and The
Weinstein Company, owned by Westport Connecticut film mogul Harvey Weinstein, a
promoter of a recently released film “The Butler.” Connecticut readers of this
column may recall Mr. Weinstein as the millionaire Democratic Party campaign
contributor who has entertained Mr. Obama and his retinue at both his Connecticut
mansion and his Manhattan log cabin. Mr. Dodd is the author, along with former
Senator Barney Frank, of the inscrutable Dodd-Frank bill. As in some post World
War II movies, everything worked out for the best when Mr. Weinstein agreed on
a compromise title for his film, now called “Lee Daniels’ The Butler”. Such is
life in the fast lanes of Tinseltown and D.C., centers of power and status full
of lawyers, acrimony and money, always a volatile and combustible combination.
Put beside this overload of Democratic Party status and
power and money, Republican politicians who hope this political season to break
into the governor’s mansion and possibly the veto proof Democratic controlled
General Assembly, taken all together, amount to a very small sack of potatoes.
The once Republican Mr. Weicker is but a distant memory who
now and then pops up at some political gathering to compliment Governor Dannel
Malloy for having instituted the largest tax increase in Connecticut history,
outpacing even the 1991 budget that featured the Weicker income tax. Linda
McMahon has been drummed off the political stage, leaving in her wake three
Republican gubernatorial aspirants, only one of whom can claim to be rich. Former ambassador to Ireland Tom Foley doesn’t
want for much; but, on the other hand, his family, unlike Mr. Blumenthal's, does not own the Empire State building and other money soddened Big Apple properties,
and Mr. Foley did not acquire his millions by marrying Stan Greenberg, a
political strategist for left of center Democratic politicians, deep-pocket politically
active companies such as Monsanto, General Motors, Gulf polluter British
Petroleum and, not least among his political associates, Mr. Greenberg’s
progressive, faux-proletarian wife, Rosa DeLauro.
This campaign season, the entirely predictable Democratic
attack on Republican one-percenters began when Democratic Party chairman Nancy
DiNardo unleashed a thunderbolt against Mr. Foley last December. “Tom Foley
just doesn’t get it,” Ms. DiNardo wrote in a media release. “Like Mitt Romney,
he doesn’t understand the challenges that average hardworking people face. He
is just another out-of-touch vulture capitalist who sees the average resident
as something less. It’s a toxic world view that the voters of this country
rejected just a few weeks ago. And if ambassador Foley runs again, he’ll find
out exactly what the voters of Connecticut think of his economic philosophy.”
Venture capitalists are the folk who invest in broken
companies in an effort to make them whole, so that the re-capitalized and
reorganized companies might be in a position to hire blue collar proletarians
just like millionaires Blumenthal and DeLauro. When Republican gubernatorial
hopeful Mark Boughton, a teacher before he ran successfully as Mayor of
Danbury, self-identified as a “blue collar” Republican, state Democratic
leaders quickly and reflexively demurred. The very notion of a blue collar
Republican puts a crimp in in Connecticut’s Democratic Party campaign playbook,
a made-in-Washington-D.C. script according to which all venture capitalists are
vulture capitalists. U.S. Representative Jim Himes, who arrived in Washington
D.C. via the toxic world of Goldman Sachs, was warmly received by most Democrats,
some of whom know even less about venture capitalists and hedge fund managers
than does Ms. DiNardo. Perhaps Mr. Himes will take on the thankless task of
explaining the ways of Wall Street to Connecticut Democrats sometime before the
next election.
In the meantime, blue collar taxpayers might want to reflect
on the following datum: None of the Republicans replaced by Democrats within
Connecticut’s all Democratic U.S. Congressional delegation were as wealthy as Mrs.
DeLauro, Mr. Blumenthal or Mr. Himes. And if one measures candidates by the
amount of other people’s money they spend, Republicans turn out to be far more
parsimonious than Democrats.
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