Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Occhiogrosso and Malloy Tolling in Connecticut is what the advertising men would call a tough sell, and it helps in circumstances such as these to bring in some political spin doctors to assist in the delivery. Many people in Connecticut, almost certainly a majority, do not want tolls. On May 9, No Tolls Connecticut delivered to the governor’s office a “No Tolls” petition signed by 100,000 people. Candidate for governor Ned Lamont said during his campaign he would favor tolls only if people outside the state, truck drivers mostly, would be depositing their mites in Connecticut’s revenue collection basket. He said this several times while the TV cameras were rolling. Later Lamont changed his mind, always the prerogative of pretty women and ambitious politicians. But Lamont’s reversal – which came shortly after he had won his gubernatorial campaign – could not be justified as a “misspeak.” He could have used the services of a good narrative builder right there, but Ro...

LAME DUCK MALLOY LARDS PORKY BOND AGENDA :  STATE OF ANGER: GOVERNOR'S RACE GETS PERSONAL ” the banner headlines on Tom Dudchik’s  “Capitol Report” read, in screaming text. “Capitol Report” is an aggregator site much frequented by Connecticut politicians and state political watchers that retails important stories. The lede to the featured Hartford Courant story read, “The state Bond Commission will meet Thursday to vote on borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars to finance projects around the state, and the potential for a bonanza of funding for Hartford.”

There is a hole in the state’s clean election law. Rigorously observed, the law is supposed to prevent state politicians from wresting campaign contributions from contractors and other business associates whom political officials oversee. The hole is quite legal, but it violates what ethicists sometimes call the “spirit of Connecticut’s clean election law.” The clean election law was adopted in Connecticut soon after then Governor John Rowland was sent packing to prison for the first time on corruption charges. The hole most recently became apparent when Attorney General George Jepsen, once Chairman of the state Democratic Party, persuaded a host of Connecticut lobbyists, business executives and deep pocket one-percenters to cough up campaign contributions for Mark Herring, a friend of Jepsen who finds himself in a tight race for Attorney General of Virginia. The controversy surrounding Jepsen and Herring may or may not be – the reader must forgive the irresistible ...

Hartford Courant investigative reporter Jon Lender  tells us that the office of the U.S. Attorney is now convening a criminal grand jury “to investigate claims of illegal fundraising by the state Democratic Party.” Truly, it ain’t over till the fat lady sings . Only a few weeks ago, it appeared that Governor Dannel Malloy’s problems had been settled in a questionable agreement accepted by two parties, the state Democratic Party and Connecticut’s State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC). The legal action brought by the SEEC, which stemmed from a complaint issued by former Republican Party Chairman Jerry Labriola, had been terminated when the State Democratic Party agreed to cough up $325,000 to bring to a conclusion a suit that would have required the Malloy administration to bring to public view in a messy legal action – shades of Hillary Clinton -- possibly incriminating e-mails involving the Governor and his co-conspirators.

Forced to choose between honest and open government on the one hand and the prospect of a winning campaign on the other hand, what professional incumbent politician would not choose the latter? Better to be a live elected rat than a dead unelected lion: Such is the overarching rule in the political barnyard. Another barnyard rule, stated by the propaganda pig in George Orwell in “Animal Farm,” goes like this:  In the political barnyard, everyone is equal – but the pigs are MORE equal. In 2014, Governor Dannel Malloy – present approval rating among voters in Connecticut 24 percent and dipping – hoped to get an edge up during his campaign against Republican Party opponent Tom Foley, who lost  by a slender 23,000 votes. But because an earlier General Assembly had reacted properly to the political peculation of former Governor John Rowland, the cash poor Malloy first had to surmount a difficulty.

“Do I Dare disturb the universe?” – T.S. Elliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Increasingly, the legacy media chooses not to disturb the universe. Disturbances always are politically inadvisable and inconvenient. In Connecticut, as everyone knows, the political universe is controlled by Democrats confabing in formerly smoke-filled back rooms, where the light of publicity rarely shines. It is the age-old mission of the media to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and Democrats in Connecticut rarely have been as comfortable as in the past few years, following the capture of the governor’s office in 2011 by Dannel Malloy, the first Democratic governor since the administration of Governor William O’Neill, who left office in 1991 as deficit clouds were marshalling on the horizon.

The Hartford Courant this year celebrated its 250 th year of continuous publication by retreating behind a paywall. A paywall is an internet iron curtain that will no longer allow “free” access to a publication unless a reader pays a fee or – much better – opens a subscription to the publication, in which case access to the publication’s internet site becomes “free.” Immured behind the new Courant paywall are such bracing left of center voices as Colin McEnroe, an immensely entertaining commentator on cultural and political matters, and, just to mention one often consulted reportorial voice at the Courant, Jon Lender, an investigative reporter who has in his day bagged many a bumbling politician. For wide-awake reporters, bagging an idiot politician is not an arduous chore; for sleepy reporters, waking up in the morning is an unhappy chore.

It’s not often reporters feel compelled to lift the veil and show the general public how politicians massage the message. This was done recently in a Hartford Courant Capitol Watch piece, and the resulting story, written by dogged investigative reporter Jon Lender, presumably with his tongue tucked far back in his cheek, is hilarious: “Pull back the curtain as top aides in the Malloy administration shape the messages that get fed to the taxpaying public, and you see how much calculation, editing and rewriting happens before a statement is finally issued — and how high up the ladder they go for approval.

The short answer to the question “Why can’t whistle blowers beat city hall?” is – because the statutory, administrative and judicial cards are stacked against the whistle blower. The game is fixed, as usual in favor of those who forcefully wield power. The purpose of the whistle blower statute is admirable and necessary. If you are a worker in a state or municipal agency and you discover in the course of your duties some sort of malfeasance, large or small, it is in the interest of the state that the problem should be reported to people who are authorized to correct the deficiency. If not you, then who? This is how operations seriously derailed are righted. It goes without saying that administrators in deficient agencies have a personal interest in quashing all whistle blower reports.

Almost immediately after Governor Dannel Malloy and Democrats in the General Assembly had put their budget to bed, a Hartford paper noted that however much lipstick Democrats put on the budget porker it was in many important respects still a pig. Another media resource noted that while the governor had indicated he had been faithful to his earlier promise to hold the line on taxes – but not, tellingly, on spending – the new budget, Mr. Malloy’s second, placed new limits on tax credits, extended expiring taxes, boosted the gasoline tax 4 cents per gallon, drained from the transportation fund $120 million collected at the pumps during the last two years, depositing the money targeted for transportation needs into the general fund, resorted to $550 million worth of fund raids to plug holes in the budget, borrowed about two thirds of the $1.2 billion necessary to convert to a GAAP accounting system and shifted a little more than $6 billion of Medicaid spending from a constitutional c...

Chris Mathews, the host of Hardball known as the guy with the tingly leg, interviewed Governor Dannel Malloy, and Mr. Malloy managed to unload a quiver of zingers at benighted Republicans who were dawdling over gun legislation. The Hartford Courant’s Dan Haar summarized the zinger fest in his column:

Unlike the case in the national scene, it’s nearly impossible for Democrats in the General Assembly to blame Republicans for delays in passing a weapons ban bill, since Democrats control both houses of the General Assembly and the governorship. The most they can do is to express impatience concerning the deliberative nature of the legislature and promise to spook thoughtful legislators. Below, in a report written by the Harford Courant’s Jon Lender , State Senate President Pro Tempore Don Williams pledges to overcome Republican recalcitrance. Actually, what is – and should be – holding up legislation are reports from crime investigators, a report from a General Assembly panel and a report from a panel assembled by Governor Dannel Malloy. Mr. Williams is just spooking the boobs. Honorable people in the General assembly should be impatient with Mr. Williams’ impatience.

One could only imagine what might have happened at the Hartford Courant’s editorial board offices if one of their investigative journalists had discovered that former Governor John Rowland, now a radio talk show host, had failed to pay his mortgage “several times,” having been sued by a bank anxious to recover mortgage payments from a dead-beat politician. Brains would have exploded.

After it had been pointed out that his drawings were hypercritical and highly unflattering representations of his subjects, a famous caricaturist responded, “What’s the point of having absolute power, if you are not prepared to abuse it?” Roy Occhiogrosso, Governor Dannel Malloy’s Senior Advisor and a fierce Malloyalist, should have internalized the quote so that he would be able to flourish it   when asked by reporters why the governor thought it necessary to recruit dozens of state officials as propaganda agents.

In the good old days, before the advent of campaign finance reform, a stretch in prison was no bar to election. Mayor Michael Curley of Boston, a colorful mob-connected figure in Massachusetts politics who made good on his campaign pledge to get the washerwomen of the city off their knees, ran the city from prison. Mr. Curley later rigged out all the washerwomen of Boston with long handled mops. It may well be the case that a stretch in jail was the booster that rocketed Mr. Curley into a long and eventful career in politics. Mr. Curley received news that he had been elected to Boston’s Board of Alderman in 1904 while cooling his heels in prison on a fraud conviction: He had fraudulently taken a civil service exam for two men applying for postmen in his district, and the stint in prison helped to burnish his reputation among the poor Irish of Boston as someone who was willing to go to the mat for those in need. During his career in politics, both as Boston Mayor and a U.S. Sena...

Jon Lender, investigative reporter for the Hartford Courant, examines some savory or unsavory – depending on one’s point of view -- connections between the Malloy administration and Northeast Utilities : “For several years ending last December, Global's Hartford office was run by Occhiogrosso. Then, when Occhiogrosso quit to take his current job in the governor's office, Global hired an NU communications executive, Tanya Meck, to take his place in Hartford. “What significance is there in this interlock of personnel, politics, consultants and clients? According to Occhiogrosso, none. "’It doesn't mean anything,’ he said. ‘It's a big company in a small state — doesn't mean anything.’"

The Solyndra energy scandal is beginning to ripen. ABC News is now reporting that a top fundraiser for President Barack Obama who was hired to help oversee the administration’s energy loan program “pushed and prodded career Department of Energy officials to move faster in approving a loan guarantee for Solyndra, even as his wife's law firm was representing the California solar company, according to internal emails made public late Friday.” And here in Connecticut, Jon Lender of the Hartford Courant is reporting that the wife of state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) commissioner Daniel Esty, Mrs. Elizabeth Esty, a former state representative now running for the U.S. Congress, has received campaign contributions from Northeast Utilities, an energy company regulated by her husband: “With controversy already enveloping the $205,000 in consulting work that Daniel C. Esty did for Northeast Utilities before he became commissioner of the state Department of...

John Lender, the Hartford Courant’s investigative reporter, caught a "mislead" on the part of Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in information he had provided for a biographical listing in the annual Martindale-Hubble Law Directory of attorneys at private law firms. Summarizing his military service, Blumenthal offered: “With USMC [U.S. Marine Corp], active duty and reserve. 1970-1976.” In Lender’s Sunday “Government Watch” column, an opinion on the misstatement was solicited from Randall Collins of Waterford, a Vet whose “active duty” included a stretch in Vietnam in the late 60’s. "’I think [active duty] was probably put in there to be misleading, based on all these other things,’ said Randall H. Collins of Waterford, who served in Vietnam in the late 1960s in the U.S. Army military intelligence division. An unaffiliated voter, Collins, 65, who is Waterford's superintendent of schools, is in the Connecticut Veterans Hall of Fame, established in 2005 to honor...

Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz continues to be roughly handled by… pretty much everyone. The latest round concerns the now infamous “list” of persons seeking help of one kind or another from the secretary of state. Bysiewicz shared her list with people on her campaign committee who might have used it, were they so disposed, to solicit contributions for their boss. Investigative journalist for the Harford Courant Jon Lender asked in a Sunday story “Why No Republican Delegates On Bysiewicz List?” One reasonable answer would appear to be: Republicans are not disposed to surrender campaign contributions to Democrats – unless they are un-protesting Republican state union workers a portion of whose dues generally go to Democratic candidates or RINO Republicans who, for all practical purposes, are indistinguishable from their Democratic confreres. State judiciary committee co-chairman Michael Lawlor, who along with his confrere Andrew McDonald a year ago attempted to pass legisla...

A splendidly written and researched story in Sunday’s Harford Courant by Josh Kovner and Jon Lender , demonstrates that the state’s attorney’s general office has become a money operation more interested in cash than justice. The story calls into question a case prosecuted by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, sometimes mentioned in press reports as a desirable Democratic candidate for governor or U.S. senator. The owners of a Brookfield quarry, Rock Acquisition Limited Partnership, convinced their property had been undervalued by two appraisers, the last hired by Blumenthal, took their case to court and were fortunate enough to have the issue decided by Superior Court Judge Barbara J. Sheedy, who was attentive to the facts of the case. Here are the facts: 1) The quarry owners questioned an appraisal of their property, taken by the state to allow the construction of a Route 7 highway bypass near Brookfield that opened last month. The owners thought their property was ...