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| Blumenthal |
A reporter asked U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal a question he had some difficulty answering.
CTMirror captured the rare moment:
“An unintended consequence of Blumenthal’s consistent advocacy for Congress to
allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, is that it underscores nothing has
happened on the issue since the Democrat’s election to the U.S. Senate nearly a
dozen years ago.
“It raises a question: At what point does advocacy without
results become a liability?”
Blumenthal answered, “There’s nothing more important to
seniors, there’s nothing more important to American consumers, than lowering
prescription drug prices and stopping the astronomical rise in costs of health
care.”
A picture underscored the answer. Blumenthal was shown in
the middle of a cluster of senior citizens, most dressed in red AARP jerseys,
bearing signs reading “Fair RX Prices now.”
The caption beneath the picture read, “Sen. Richard
Blumenthal arrives with AARP volunteers for a press conference. His state
director, Rich Kehoe, directs them to their marks.”
CTMirror noted that Blumenthal had “skewered pharmaceutical
companies and demanded that Congress act to lower Medicare drug costs.”
The publication noted that Blumenthal’s approval rating had
plummeted of late and popped the question, but the senator “waved off further
questions about his approval rating. ‘That’s really all I’m going to say.’”
And with that, Blumenthal was onto his next media
opportunity, his non-answer to the initial question lingering in the air like
the acrid odor of a spent firecracker.
Suppose Blumenthal had been asked the question strapped to a
lie detector or, better still, under oath. Witnesses under oath at trial are
sworn to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” and, should
the witness fail to do so, he or she may face a crippling fine or time spent in
the clinker. Politicians in campaign mode, as we all know, are not under oath.
And they may abruptly terminate any painful probing on subjects they are unwilling
to address in public.
The reporter’s question -- At what point does advocacy
without results become a liability? -- a very important one, should not be so
rudely dismissed.
Let’s see.
Both Blumenthal and U.S. Senator Chris Murphy have been
hawking “gun control” ever since a shooter in Sandy Hook, Connecticut had entered
an elementary school and murdered 27 children and staff members. The shooter
was 21 years old, a virtual recluse who had illegally stolen guns legally
purchased by his mother, whom he murdered with a 22 rifle before he packed a
mini-arsenal in the trunk of his car, shot his way through an unguarded front
door of the school and murdered everyone he could. He ended his own life with a
pistol. Investigators later found an automatic shotgun in the trunk of his car.
Almost immediately after the shooting,
voices were raised demanding a ban on “assault weapons,” the chief culprit in
the mass murder, one would suppose from legislation inspired by Blumenthal and
Murphy.
The two senators had some luck persuading a Democrat
controlled General Assembly and Democrat Governor Dannel Malloy, now the
besieged Chancellor of Maine’s higher
education system, to enact a gun regulation program celebrated as one of the
most restrictive in the nation. The two senators have had less luck persuading
their colleagues in Congress to pass legislation that, some Constitutional
scholars think, might violate Constitutional prescriptions.
Connecticut’s gun restrictions seem not to have reduced gun
violence in the state’s urban areas.
According to recent FBI data, “The violent crime rate in Hartford is
992.2 per 100,000 people. That's 155.85% higher than the national rate of 387.8
per 100,000 people [and] 446.41% higher than the Connecticut violent crime rate
of 181.6 per 100,000 people.
Prosecutorial inhibitions, both in Connecticut and
nationwide, is a contributory factor in ever increasing violent crime rates. Some states do not vigorously
prosecute gun crimes or illegal gun acquisitions. In nearly every urban
shooting, local police know the shooters, some of whom have prior arrest
records, and preventive measures cannot be effectively deployed when those
charged with keeping the peace are prevented from doing so by prosecutors and
others who believe that other sociological measures are more successful than
robust prosecution in quelling urban crime.
We know that schools are much more easily fortified against
mass shootings than other places. Schools, virtual pedagogical castles, can be
hardened against random attacks without erecting a drawbridge around the
castle.
So then, has advocacy without results been political
liability for Blumenthal and Murphy?
Not at all.
In the absence of an effective bill, advocacy without
results enables politicians to bankroll their campaigns for office without fear
that their ineffective proposals, burdened with disastrous unintended
consequences, will, so to speak, disturb the universe. A bill never passed
never will bring forth either strenuous opposition, unwanted consequences, or
results that, had the bill been passed, easily might be shown to have been
ineffective over the course of time.
Advocacy without results, some reasonable people might
agree, has been beneficial for politicians on the make and disastrous for
people they claim to represent.
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