U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, Connecticut’s consumer
protection Congressman, might have been speaking of the Clinton Foundation, a
mare’s nest of government-corporation entanglement, when he mused, “Time is not
on our side. We really need to move quickly, because the longer it goes without
some scrutiny or oversight, the more general acceptance there will be. We need
to create this sense of outrage and alarm that pieces of the government are
being sold and compromised.”
But of course, he wasn’t.
Mr. Blumenthal was drawing a bead on President-Elect Donald Trump.
Apparently, there is to be no honeymoon during this post-election season. It
used to be considered seemly to wait a few weeks into a Presidency before the
political opposition began to seed the political theatre with their Weapons of
Mass Destruction (WMDs).
Mr. Blumenthal and Company, we are advised by a piece in Politico, “Democrats salivate over Trump business conflicts," are anxious to begin their work of
destruction – even before Mr. Trump has been sworn in as President.
Mr. Blumenthal has
had lengthy experience in business demolition. As Attorney General in
Connecticut for more than 20 years, Mr. Blumenthal had shown himself to be well
versed in the art. When he left the Attorney General’s office to assume
his consumer protection duties in the U.S. Congress, Mr. Blumenthal left behind more than 500 cases in which businessmen were left on hooks in Mr. Blumenthal’s prosecutorial
dungeon for years; the cases were quickly disposed of by incoming Attorney
General George Jepsen. The only business Mr. Blumenthal has no interest in regulating appears to be Planned Parenthood, the abortion provider and
baby-parts merchant.
Mr. Blumenthal will be assisted in his efforts by New York
Senator Charles Schumer. Upon being chosen as the new Democrat Minority Leader,
Mr. Schumer vowed,
“I am going to wake up every single day
focused on how Senate Democrats can effectively fight for America's middle
class and those struggling to join it.” Possibly, Mr. Blumenthal and Mr.
Schumer are suffering from an advanced case of Nietzschean ressentiment http://donpesci.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-weicker-template-modern-politics.html.
Mr. Trump has been stealing Democratic Party flags. In the
manner of Mr. Blumenthal waving a suit at one of his victims, Mr. Trump – whose
campaign slogan was “Make America Great Again” – has just persuaded Greg Hayes,
the CEO of United Technology (UTC), to refrain from closing a Carrier plant in Indiana. Reuters noted that “Carrier's parent, United Technologies, has a strong incentive to keep
good relations with Trump and his incoming administration, given that a portion
of its estimated $57 billion revenue this year will come through U.S. military
contracts at its Pratt & Whitney and UTC Aerospace Systems units.” The
money lost by Mr. Hayes in keeping in Indiana a plant scheduled to be moved to
Mexico would be more than offset by President-Elect Trump’s business
corporation tax cut. That is a deal Mr. Malloy has yet to strike with companies
in Connecticut anxious to cut labor costs by moving to more tax friendly states
in which business regulations are minimal. These are states that have escaped
Mr. Blumenthal’s regulatory afflatus.
Not bad deal making for a President-Elect. And Mr. Trump has
vowed to restore American military power by insisting that submarine builders
increase production to three rather than two subs a year. Newly re-elected
Democratic Representative Joe Courtney – known as “two-sub Joe” – is doubtless
pleased, because in two years he will be able to run for re-election as “three
sub Joe.”
According to Politico, “Blumenthal, a veteran federal
prosecutor and state Attorney General, already has called for an independent
counsel to take over federal investigations of Deutsche Bank under Trump, given
that the bank has lent the President-Elect hundreds of millions of dollars for
several of his real estate projects. And he's not done strategizing.
“’I am thinking seriously about new tools and mechanisms
that have to be devised and implemented’ to conduct oversight of Trump,
Blumenthal said.”
One wonders if the application of Mr. Blumenthal’s ingenious
tools and mechanisms to the flag stealer just might produce some unfortunate retaliatory
consequences for Connecticut. Mr. Trump so far has had little difficulty in
deciding who are his friends and enemies.
We now know that Trump stole more than Democratic position
papers. While the Democratic Party was off flirting with progressives, Trump
was offering a marriage proposal to vanquished and forgotten moderate Democrats
and Republicans unembarrassed by the tears shed by their founder, Abraham
Lincoln, over the war dead, the oppressed, the toiling masses and those
ghettoized by self-seeking politicians who at every moment thrust out their
chests and pose absurdly as saviors of the people, when in fact they are eating
out the substance of our representative Republic.
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