Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

It might have proved embarrassing, but a senatorial duck saved the day. Former Speaker of Connecticut’s House of Representatives Jim Amann had received a call from U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal, formerly the state’s Attorney General and a shameless media hound, asking if the senator could participate in a press availability at which Mr. Amann and Raymond Bechard, author of a book deploring sexual slavery on the Berlin Turnpike, were to announce their support of a bill that would hold publishers legally liable for accepting ads that might, or might not, lead to acts of prostitution. Mr. Amann said “Sure!” And why not? Rare is the congressman who can resist bathing in the waters of moral rectitude. Mr. Blumenthal, as the state’s Comstockian attorney general, had dipped his toes in constitutionally troubled waters before. Mr. Amann, somewhat like former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, who cashed in his senatorial chits to become a one percenter in Tinseltown, is into film. Mr. Bechard, au...

Former Speaker of the state House Jim Amann, the Wicked Stepmother to Gov. Jodi Rell’s Snow White, has decided he would rather not be governor. The road to this decision for Amann has been a winding one. As Speaker Amann was regarded by some as a “fiscal conservative,” a vanishing breed within the Democratic Party. He stepped out of the House in favor of the present Speaker, Chris Donovan, once and forever a union leader and not, even his most ardent admirers may admit, a conservative anything. "I'm just a beach kid from Milford, Connecticut,'' Amann told the crowd that saw him off. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think I could run for governor.'' A dwindling number of moderates in the Democratic Party regarded Amann, a plainspoken man, as a Harry Truman type. Truman was, of course, the Stalin bashing president who launched the United States on the road to containment of the Soviet Union, a steadfast course pursued by several presidents whose determi...

One way to gain friends and influence people in the opposing camp, if you are a governor, is to leave office. This will please the opposition, particularly if you happen to be popular. As governor, Jodi Rell was more popular with Connecticut voters than any of the Democrats presently in the gubernatorial field. It is therefore not surprising that when Rell decided not to pursue another run as governor, reporters beating the bushes to find someone in the Democratic camp who might be willing to say something pleasant about the departing governor were amply rewarded. According to one report , Rell was a “fair-minded leader driven not by ideology but rather by old-fashioned common sense.” She was a “moderate,” which is far better than being a “conservative,” though lately the word “conservative” has been drained of much of its venom, particularly when it is forced to march hand in hand with the word “fiscal,” as in “fiscal conservative.” Former Speaker of the House Jim Amann, now run...

At one point in his career as a fiscal conservative transforming into a tax and spend liberal, Jim Amann, the then the Speaker of the House now running for governor, speculated that Gov. Jodi Rell’s popularity was unsinkable because the public viewed her as everyone’s grandma. When the “grandma” body-slam failed in its effect, Amann, and other Democrats, took to calling Rell ‘Snow White,’ which was even less productive. People who know Snow White, an evocation of Eve in the garden, like her because she is snowy and white and not at all like the queen disguised as a farmer’s wife who tempts her fatally with that poisonous but tasty apple. Amann intended his remarks as withering criticism. The intimation was that in matters of economics, an arcane and highly manipulable science, Rell was somewhat dimwitted when compared to, say, the economic propaganda minister of the Democratic Party, the academic or party functionary with a degree in Early Marx we see regularly on our TV sets waving in...

There are five political parties operating in Connecticut: the governor’s party, headed for the past few years by Jodi Rell; the old guard Republican Party; the new Republican Party; the old guard Democrat Party, and progressive Democrats. Governor Rell and the new Republicans have in the past been at logger heads on important budgetary issues. The new Republicans want a stripped down state managed preferably by a Republican dominated legislature that is fiscally responsible and energetic in the pursuit of conservative economic principles. Rell will, as she and her predecessor had in the past, reach compromises with the Democrat dominated legislature that will be distasteful to the new Republicans, who hope to be able to mount a convincing campaign against an entrenched Democrat majority. A similar bifurcation presents itself in the Democrat Party. The diminishing old guard is in the process of being swallowed whole by progressives; occasionally one glimpses a bloody torso dangling fro...

After an avalanche of criticism, former speaker of the State House Jim Amann has decided to look elsewhere for a job. He still wants to be governor. According to the Waterbury Republican American, “Former Republican Sen. David J. Cappiello, meanwhile, is the new senior policy adviser to super minority Senate Republicans. For $103,000 a year, he will tell them whether they should lay horizontally or vertically when Democrats steamroller them.” The ever gracious Nancy Pelosi took time in her busy schedule to bid former President George Bush farewell. His leave-taking, said the lady, "was like having a 10-ton anvil lifted from my shoulders," though it may be doubted whether such a cumbersome weight could fit on her slender and graceful shoulders. The new president, she confided to Bay area reporters, “will be great for California because he “has an entrepreneurial way of thinking, a fresh way of thinking, a commitment to the environment, a push for green jobs and reversing glo...

The new Speaker of Connecticut’s House of Representatives, Chris Donovan , has hired as a senior advisor, at a salary of $120,000-per-year, the outgoing Speaker of the House, Jim Amann, who has thrown his hat into the gubernatorial ring. This has upset some pro-Donovan commentators . One recalls the scene in “Sienfeld” in which Seinfeld’s buddy George, who finally gets a decent job, has sex with a cleaning lady on his desk. He is found out and called on the carpet by his new boss, who promptly fires him, eliciting the following response: “Was that wrong?” "I am not a rich guy," Amann said. "I need to work to keep a roof over my head and take care of my wife." Perhaps so, but the hiring puts a damper on Amann’s gubernatorial run and raises the interesting question: Is the run a cover for the job? How serious is Amann’s gubernatorial bid?

“ Capitol Watch ,” a bog written by two Hartford Courant reporters, is reporting that “House Speaker James A. Amann's announcement that he will not seek re-election in November set off a scramble to climb the leadership ladder.” Presumably House members vying for the position are less experienced than the present occupant of that office, James Amann, who has announced his intention to run for governor. Amann also is less experienced in the rigors of governing the state than the present occupant of that office, Gov. Jodi Rell. No one from the Democrat camp has yet argued that Amann should not run for governor because in doing so he will be surrendering his office to novices who lack "experience on the job." The notion that experienced legislators may never be replaced because the state will lose technical proficiency is an argument for reestablishing a monarchy and abolishing elections. This argument is trotted out whenever the word "term limits" are mentioned, a...

Whatever you tax – and excessive regulation may also be viewed as a tax, since it forces companies to shell out money that might better be spent elsewhere – disappears, including, in the long run, revenues collected by the tax. This is what is happening in Connecticut. Taxpayers and taxed companies are disappearing. The current budget is about $16 billion, slouching towards $18 billion; that’s more than twice the bottom line figure of the last pre-income tax budget. Some of us are old enough to remember fondly the days of Democrat governors who were able, usually by threatening to burn down the houses of Democrat legislative leaders, to control the ravenous appetite for spending that always threatens to burst budget envelopes. They are long gone. High taxes have forced companies in Connecticut that cannot absorb the usual raid on profits to move elsewhere in search of lower labor costs, lower taxes and less entangling regulation. During the terms of the last three governors, two of the...

There were, of course, obstacles to be overcome. For obvious reasons, it was impossible to vote down the ethics legislation. Ever since the prison door clanged shut on former Governor John Rowland, Democrats had been clamoring, as had Republicans, for ethics reform. Historically, both parties had ventured too far out on the issue to vote down necessary reforms. The reform bill approved by the senate answered all the problems that had arisen since Rowland’s imprisonment, a blot on the escutcheon of the Republican Party that Democrats easily could exploit in campaign literature. The bill that Amann would not permit to come to a vote would have: 1) Revoked pensions for elected officials and state and municipal employees convicted of a crime related to their employment. 2) Made the failure of reporting a bribe a class A Misdemeanor if the public servant witnessed the offer. 3) Prevented chiefs of staff in the Capitol from soliciting campaign contributions from staff members for state of mu...

Retroactivity in the ethics bill may be out of sight – It did not play a part in the bills offered for consideration to the legislature – but it definitely is not out of mind. Speaker of the House Jim Amann , who has indicated he might want to run for governor on the Democrat ticket, says he has no problem with retroactivity, “and I'm surprised with some people in that building who do.” The people who have surprised Amann probably are addicted to the rule of law, which holds a man cannot be guilty of breaking a law that did not exist when action for which he is being retroactively punished was committed. A refresher course in the political thought of the founders might budge him from his astounding misinterpretation of the rule of law that undergirds all Western laws. In "Alice In Wonderland," the Queen of Hearts is seen to be no respecter of the rule of law: “First the verdict,” she cries, “then the trial.” Amann dispenses even with the trial and finds men guilty retrosp...

In a rational universe Chester’s First Selectman Tom Marsh’s idea might be bruited about in the state legislature; it certainly would not be rejected out of hand. Mr. Marsh fresh from a recent conversation with Senate President Pro Tem Donald Williams, wants Connecticut to know that for the past year he has been promoting “a policy that allows towns to keep a portion of the sales and income tax that is generated.” An earlier idea promoted by several of Connecticut’s mayors, that selected big cities should be permitted to levy sales taxes, is the wrong idea, in Marsh’s view, because it would encourage the flight of capital from city to suburb. After being told by Williams that there was no magic money tree in the basement of the Capitol building from which dollars could be plucked and given to the towns, Marsh, David facing Goliath, slung his proposal at Williams, writing later in an letter to a newspaper that it was his idea to shift to towns “control of a portion of the tax revenue” f...

Now that former Governor Bill O’Neill has passed on, everyone is laying claim to the body. O’Neill was a kindly man, a genteel barkeep who wandered into politics at a time when it was thought that barkeeps -- rather than, say, news people – could run for governor or president and win. He never lost his common touch; it was both his strength and his weakness. The most dangerous and cowardly word in politics is “yes.” O’Neill, as Chris Powell of the Journal Inquirer reminds us, was full of yeses, which is why the state budget flowered under his hand. A conservative in demeanor only, Powell writes, O’Neill “in 10 years and 10 days, enacted, almost mutely, most of the liberal agenda of his time -- vast state underwriting of municipal school expenses, the near-doubling of teacher salaries, and the tripling of total state reimbursements to towns. Prompted by the bridge collapse in Greenwich in 1983, O'Neill also arranged a huge program of road renovation. His conservative demeanor was u...

According to a story in the Waterbury Republican American by Martin Begnal , the Democrats may have produced their first Jean D’Arc. Joan Hartley is feeling the whips and scorns of the Democrat Party leadership. Said Hartman, “"They told me I had to support this, and if I didn't then the benefits of the caucus wouldn't be available to me, and I would lose my committee chair, my office and my parking space." “This” is the porcine Democrat bonding plan vetoed by Gov. Jodi Rell. Hartley is the lone hold-out preventing an over-ride of the governor’s veto. And Keith M. Phaneuf of the Journal Inquirer, as usual, gets it right and calls things by their right names. “Connecticut, which has more than $14.3 billion in bonded debt,” Phaneuf notes, “is one of the most indebted states, per capita, in the nation. And annual payments on that debt are consuming an increasingly large share of the state budget. This fiscal year's debt service is expected to top $1.83 billion, or 1...

The Democrat’s bonding proposal is understandable only as a campaign strategy. Speaker of the House Jim Amann argues that Rell need not veto the Democrat bonding plan, busting with unaffordable but delicious goodies, because the governor is authorized by “tradition” to exercise what amounts to a line item veto. If the governor does not like a specific line item in the bonding package, it cannot be passed into law without her approval. This tradition enables Democrats to front load bond packages with earmarks that will keep Democrat legislators in line, and it has the additional advantage of making the governor appear to be less than caring when she nixes the window dressing funds proposed by generous and compassionate Democrats. In the best of all possible worlds, bonding would be reserved for capital projects that benefit the whole state, since the interest on bonding is paid by state rather than municipal taxpayers. But, somewhere along the line, the rational boundaries of bonding ex...

State House of Representatives Speaker Jim Amann didn’t want key Republicans present during a “negotiation” session between Gov. Jodi Rell, himself and President Pro Tem of the Senate Donald Williams, so he did what any other petulant child would have done under similar circumstances: He boycotted the bonding negotiation session. Republican leader John McKinney, banned from the “very cordial” session by Amann, has said that Amann “needs to grow up.” Attending the session along with Rell and McKinney, Amann’s confederate in the senate, the resourceful Williams, has not yet been successful in persuading his counterpart to grow up. One begins to suspect that it’s all part of the William/Amann good guy, bad guy routine.

In Bridgeport, it’s all over but for the kissing. Challenges to Bill Finch, who won the Bridgeport mayoralty primary against corruption crusader state Rep. Chris Caruso, are fast disappearing. Former Mayor John M. Fabrizi, who indicated he might enter the mayoralty race as a third party candidate should Caruso win the primary, has agreed to settle comfortably into obscurity now that Finch has prevailed over Caruso. And pictures printed in The Connecticut Post show House Speaker James Amann sharing the dais with Caruso after Casuso had been dished by Finch; Caruso, as usual, looks earnestly out at the audience, while Amann stands to his left wearing a Mona Lisa smile. Another photo shows Finch, his left arm wrapped around his wife, punching the air in a victory salute, while Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams smiles and applauds in the background. It seems odd to find Amann in Caruso’s corner and Williams in Finch’s. Amann was widely criticized by the left wing of his party f...

Talking a bit off page to a reporter for The Day , Democrat Rep. Ted Moukawsher of Groton blurted out the truth. “The tax package,” he said, “… sort of just appeared, and I don't think we were invested in it. It was like budgeting by press conference. It was whatever someone decided was a counter to the governor's (latest) press conference and whatever sort of proposal she had. The leaders didn't really consult with membership at the Senate or the House level, and then when it didn't work out the way they expected it to, they never came back to us and said, 'Well, how about this?' It was really kind of weird. They never consulted us and then they abandoned us afterward. We went from being this mighty majority to being this feeble, fractured, kind-of disorganized group.” The blustery Speaker of the House Jim Amann of course was singing a different tune. “They must be ... brain-dead,” Amann said concerning disgruntled members of his party in an interview with Ted...

Taxpayers, their own belts tightened, may breathe a sigh of relief that the current legislative session is officially over. Of course, it’s never over until the fat lady sings, but this year, the summer of our discontent, we narrowly escaped some idiocies, mostly because Democrats, the dominant party in the legislature, ran out of time. This was the year that progressives in the Democrat Party were poised to fleece the state’s millionaires, but there did not seem to be, even among the general voting public, the necessary support for their program. The “millionaire’s tax,” embraced with wild enthusiasm some time ago by progressives such as mayor of New Haven John DeStefano, quickly trickled down to wage earners making about $250,000 a year. Democrats argued that their re-vamped plan would effectively provide tax relief to middle class wage earners, and when Governor Rell, showing some spine at last, refused to sign the legislation, the big guns in the party were brought out to accused h...

On one of his many campaign stops across the country, Senator John Kennedy, then running for president, found himself at the Alamo. It was very hot, very crowded, and Kennedy was anxious to be on time for his next campaign appearance. He was running late. So Kennedy corralled a guide and asked where the back door was. “There are no back doors to the Alamo, Senator Kennedy,” he was told. “Only heroes.” Speaker of the House James Amann beat a most unheroic retreat, one newspaper reported, “rather than have budget negotiations that included Republican leaders Rep. Lawrence Cafero and Sen. Louis DeLuca,” who has a bid of a problem involving his grand daughter’s husband and state prosecutors. DeLuca recently pleaded guilty to a charge of “threatening conspiracy,” a misdemeanor, that arose from a meeting he had with James Galante in which DeLuca was told by Galante that he would help the senator settle a family problem. The problem involved a granddaughter who, DeLuca thought, was being abu...