Government is at best but an
expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes,
inexpedient -- Henry
David Thoreau
Mike Lawlor – once, along with
Andrew McDonald, the co-chair of the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee –
was tapped by Governor Dannel Malloy in 2011 as the governor’s prison czar. His
official title is Under
Secretary for Criminal Justice Policy and Planning and, like other Malloyalists, Mr. Lawlor has a serious case of reformitus.
Mr. Malloy is similarly contaminated.
When Henry David Thoreau sought to improve the age old maxim “That government is best which governs least,” he hit upon this: “That government governs best which governs not at all.” Thoreau, a closet anarchist, is best known by those who have never bothered to read his overtly political writings, as a protester who spent a few hours in jail for refusing to pay his taxes. It is not generally known why Mr. Thoreau declined to pay the tax. Later, in a rarely read essay called “Slavery in Massachusetts,” Mr. Thoreau, a committed abolitionist who supported John Brown’s effort to start a slave rebellion in the South, would write that neither he nor his countrymen should pay a tax that would be used to buy a bullet to shoot a slave. Thoreau was too impatient to mince words. “Slavery in Massachusetts” is a vigorous attack on the “peculiar institution,” the church of his day and newspapers.
When Henry David Thoreau sought to improve the age old maxim “That government is best which governs least,” he hit upon this: “That government governs best which governs not at all.” Thoreau, a closet anarchist, is best known by those who have never bothered to read his overtly political writings, as a protester who spent a few hours in jail for refusing to pay his taxes. It is not generally known why Mr. Thoreau declined to pay the tax. Later, in a rarely read essay called “Slavery in Massachusetts,” Mr. Thoreau, a committed abolitionist who supported John Brown’s effort to start a slave rebellion in the South, would write that neither he nor his countrymen should pay a tax that would be used to buy a bullet to shoot a slave. Thoreau was too impatient to mince words. “Slavery in Massachusetts” is a vigorous attack on the “peculiar institution,” the church of his day and newspapers.
Serious socialism at the time Mr.
Thoreau wrote had not yet made inroads into American society and, like most men
of his time, Mr. Thoreau was fiercely independent, which is the essential
message of Walden Pond: “I went to the woods because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not
learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had
not lived.” You cannot do that with government perched on your shoulder parroting
its imprecations in your ear. Neither the zoning board of our day nor the
environmental police would have permitted the construction of Mr. Thoreau’s
rude cabin on Walden Pond. The relationship of government to the individual,
Thoreau understood, was an inverse one in most important respects: The more
powerful the government, the weaker the people.
Mr. Malloy and all the Malloyalists
– but most especially Mr. Lawlor – are the living antitheses of the American ethos
so brashly announced by Mr. Thoreau.
There is no other word for it: Mr.
Lawlor simply betrayed his former colleagues in the General Assembly
when he tucked his stow-away prison reform plan the “Risk Reduction Earned Credits” program,
in an end of the legislative year omnibus implementer bill, so that his
signature legislation would bypass public and legislative scrutiny.
The very title of Mr. Lawlor's program was
Orwellian Newspeak. Others have pointed out that early release credits disbursed
retroactively to violent prisoners cannot have been “earned” by convicted
criminals who had not experienced the pedagogical aspects of Mr. Lawlor’s
program. And violent prisoners released early under the auspices of Mr.
Lawlor’s program were a risk to the communities into which they were released.
Following Frankie “The Razor” Resto’s
rampage in Meriden, Mr. Lawlor’s “get out of jail early” credits were closely scrutinized and found wanting chiefly for four reasons: 1) the program was applied retroactively to prisoners who could not
have benefited from the putative therapeutic courses offered under its
auspices; 2 the credits continue to be offered to violent criminals — rapists,
for instance; and 3) by adjusting prison sentences for violent criminals, the
program distorted both sentences handed down by judges and arrangements made to
satisfy victims of violence who may be put in jeopardy by early releases, 4)
the program is administered by a single person who reports to the governor
rather than a committee of penological experts.
Opposition to Mr. Lawlor’s ill-conceived
program came from three quarters: Mr. Lawlor’s former Republican colleagues in
the General Assembly; then Senator Len Suzio, in whose back yard Mr. Resto
committed his bloody crime; then Victim’s Advocate Michelle Cruz, replaced by Garvin Ambrose, who recently left his position; and reporters,
few of whom wrote for major media outlets, who thought that murders – there
were more than one – committed by convicted criminals who had benefitted from
Mr. Lawlor’s “Get Out Of Jail Early” scheme might possibly make a good story.
Most recently, Mr. Suzio has
pointed out that the statute creating the putatively independent Office Of
Victims Advocate “prohibits Lawlor from serving on the Committee," a convenient post that permitted Mr. Lawlor to force Ms. Cruz from her
position. Statutory regulations apparently apply to everyone but Mr. Malloy’s
subalterns.
In the absence of reforms that
could be made to salvage a program some of the features of which are worth
preserving, the ruinous consequences to pubic peace and security that
inevitably flow from Mr. Lawlor’s dangerous program remain a good, if
insufficiently covered, story. In the one party state of Mr. Malloy, where opposition is easily
snuffed and every string attached to every major goof-up is pulled by
Malloyalists, the proper coverage of good stories may come with a price too
dear to bear.
Note: The links in this summary blog are all separate stories, some of which were columns.
Comments
Of course, it does serve others, those who believe that they are our masters. Our lack of defiance to this supposition on a daily basis only serves to continue our continuing enslavement.
Years ago, for a period of seven years, I refused to pay FedGov income taxes. Of course I was hunted down, and was forced to pay my back taxes, or, I decided that I might as well, because no one would join me in this fight.
I continued to pay Ct State Income tax, from the time it was instituted, but refused to fill out the paperwork at the end of the year, as this income tax wss opposed by myself as well as the majority of the cits of this state
When I finally began to file CT Income tax, I was always owed money back, but the State would turn that money over to FedGov, to pay FedGov back taxes.
My story indicates that this collusion between CT and FedGov is part of the criminal enterprise under which we live.
Ct is hounding me once again to fill out their forms so that they can have my signature on them before turning over money to me that is rightfully mine, to FedGov. I have decided to refuse to do this. I will tell DRS to do my taxes for me, as I am tired of this illegal robbery of me, and will not be party to it- by filling out their forms.
Wish me luck Don, as we both know that defiance can extract a heavy price. As for myself, I am not a slave, and I will not act as one any longer.
As to FedGov, at this point I am seriously considering starting another tax strike, as I do not wish to willfully fund a criminal FedGov.
Yours:
Dan Kardas, Windsor Locks, CT
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It is ironic that libertarian ideology, attached to fanatical white-guilty Protestant egalitarianism, can be seen to have been the first cause of our ongoing descent into totalitarianism. Lord knows that John Brown wouldn't be hanged in the New Age Nutmeg State. His rebellion failed, but his "truth" can't stop marching on; at a minimum he'd get Lawlor's early release. John Brown, Eric Holder, and Mike Lawlor are hell bent on "social justice" not only in disregard of the Constitution(s) and the Rule of Law, but in opposition to them.
Obviously, it was a hell of a lot less imprudent, not to say courageous, to withhold taxes from the Government(s) before they were co-opted by Gnostic social engineers, and I would recommend that everyone stay clear of the IRS at all costs. It actually is a criminal enterprise operating with the patina of legitimacy provided by John Brown's higher law.
Suzio is correct; Lawlor ought to resign from the Committee. And, he is correct that the Malloy Gang's purging of Michelle Cruz for her intellectual honesty was disgraceful.
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He captured Harper’s Ferry, with his nineteen men so few,
And frightened "Old Virginny" till she trembled thru and thru;
They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew,
But his soul is marching on.
I discussed JB’s assault more fully here: http://donpesci.blogspot.com/2009/10/john-brown-150th-anniversary-of-raid-on.html
Interesting character, sort of a New World Old World prophet, Calvinist to the bone.
If John Brown had been around in recent decades he'd have more friends in high political places, not merely in the cultural elite. Eric Holder would not prosecute him, or, alternately, Hussein-Obama would issue a pardon (before paying retribution for violating his human rights). Subsequently, Brown might get a tenured position at a law school or a time slot on MSNBC.
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Together in the room were William Lloyd Garrison and the impetuous Wendell Phillips, both anti-slavery agitators; transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Bronson Alcott, accompanied by his daughter Louisa May Alcott, author of “Little Women”; Franklin Sanborn, the Concord teacher whose students had included Emerson, Brown and Henry James Sr.; and Julia Ward Howe, the author of the “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
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“I wish I had done more, but it doesn’t mean I wish we’d bombed more shit.” Ayers said that he had never been responsible for violence against other people and was acting to end a war in Vietnam in which “thousands of people were being killed every week.” He also stated, "While we did claim several extreme acts, they were acts of extreme radicalism against property,” and “We killed no one and hurt no one. Three of our people killed themselves.”[36]
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In February 2010, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) forced Holder to acknowledge that at least nine Justice Department attorneys officially represented or served as advocates for Gitmo detainees before joining the Obama administration.