Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Mayor Luke Bronin of Hartford will be facing six Democrat mayoralty opponents, nearly all of whom insist that the bonds of affection that tie former Governor Dannel Malloy’s chief counsel to the city of Hartford are not, shall we say, fierce. The lede in a Hartford Courant story ominously titled “ Luke Bronin has again promised to serve a full four years as Hartford mayor. Will voters believe him this time?” pretty much sums up the general discontent : “ Mayor Luke Bronin said this week it’s his intention, if re-elected, to spend all four years in office, and to support Gov. Ned Lamont in his own potential bid for a second term. But the familiar pledge, given during an interview with The Courant, carries less weight than it did four years ago when the 38-year-old, then a candidate heading into the mayoral primary, made what turned out to be an empty promise.”

I t’s not at all unusual for aides employed by governors and presidents to make their way into lucrative businesses that are, once the aides have left public service, profitably engaged with entities connected in one way or another with their former bosses. Communication directors for presidents or governors occasionally are hired by news networks that report on government operations, or governmental aides join lucrative firms that advise businesses or politicians how best to interface with government bigwigs. The walls that separate politics and corporate entities that do business either with a state or national regulatory octopus are semi-permeable.

Hartford, Connecticut’s capital city, has been a one-horse town since 1971, when the last Republican Mayor, Ann Uccello, was recruited by then President Richard Nixon to serve in the U.S. Department of Transportation. Since that time, more than 44 years, Hartford has languished in the grip of the Democratic Party hegemon. Hegemony always has and always will produce aberrant and corrupt government, largely because in one-party systems there are no political checks and balances, the administrative state is captive to an easily manipulable single party, and there are fewer eyes looking through the windows.

Republican Party Chairman Chris Healy, clearly a partisan, has called upon Attorney General and Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. Senate Richard Blumenthal to surrender his position as attorney general, the sooner the better. Healy makes the following points in a press release : 1) “It is clear that Dick Blumenthal wants the taxpayers to subsidize his campaign strategy, thereby hiding from reporters and voters with legitimate questions on his policy positions and record, while issuing press releases from his AG’s office to sue entities that suit politically. If you notice, many of these suits provide him with national and state media exposure.” 2) The attorney general’s office has become something of a shield, protecting the prospective U.S. Senator from exposure to media scrutiny: “A series of missteps, evasions of his record and bad publicity has caused Blumenthal to hunker down in his office, rarely appearing before microphones after nearly 20 years of being a ubiquitous m...

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has written to Kevin Kane to advise him that Connecticut’s “Pension Revocation Statute” requires him to notify the Chief State’s Attorney of the “possibility that any fine, restitution or any other monetary order of the criminal court” may be paid from the pension of Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez. Blumenthal, according to the attorney general’s press spokesman, both proposed and pressed the legislature to adopt the statute under which pensions could be revoked. “Mr. Perez’s conviction,” Blumenthal noted in his letter dated June 29,2010, “ reflects significant violations of public trust and misuse of office. Accordingly, I intend, at the earliest possible time and in consultation with your office, to seek an order revoking his pension.” Mayor Perez resigned from office after he had been found guilty, according to a Hartford Courant report of “receiving a bribe, fabricating evidence, accessory to the fabrication of evidence, conspiracy to ...

That racket on the stairs was the body of now former Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez tumbling down. There seems to be little doubt that his demise as mayor was a form of suicide rather than manslaughter. Perez’s appointed end had been visible to most political watchers soon after stories began to surface in the press concerning favors done by contractor Carlos Costa for Perez at a time when the memory of similar favors conferred upon former Governor John Rowland were still fresh in the mind of everyone but partisan Democratic politicians who had supported the Hartford mayor over the years. Democratic politicians were a little slow on the uptake. After Perez’s verdict was read out by the jury – the Mayor is facing a possible 50 year sentence – one columnist noted that Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was somewhat laggard in this regard : “I think it's fair to ask Richard Blumenthal, who has announced his intention to use the fairly new pension and benefits law against Perez, why h...

On June 27, 2007, Inspector Michael Sullivan received a report that Mayor Eddie Perez had some work done in his house by a contractor appointed to do a major job for the city of Hartford. The information supplied to him tickled his worry wart, and Sullivan arranged a meeting with Perez the following day. A record of the meeting was made. Sullivan asked Perez whether people who were doing work for the city also had done work on his house. Perez answered yes. Did the mayor pay for the work, and did he receive a cost reduction? Perez said he paid the market price for the housework done by Carlos Costa in the amount of $20,000 a year and a half earlier. There was no contract involved; the work was done by verbal agreement. Sullivan asked for a copy of Perez’s cancelled check. Perez said he would be happy to furnish a copy of the check. There was no check. Payment on the work – minus a 50% discount, according to the contractor -- was made a year and a half after the work had been co...

Comments on the Alpert-Blumenthal debate at the University of Hartford are now dribbling in. One money quote used in most press reports concerned the role played by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in generating business for Connecticut: “Alpert: … we have less jobs since he’s been in office. I would ask one question of the attorney general: How many jobs have your suits created? “Blumenthal: … Our law suits, our legal actions, actually create jobs, because businesses actually welcome competition and a level playing field.” Lori Perez of Fox 61 Live noted that, following the debate, “Richard Blumenthal… could not stay to talk to the press.” He was due at a money throwing gathering downstate. Kevin Rennie, a Hartford Courant commentator  was unimpressed by Blumenthal’s performance: “Easy victories in 20 years of races for attorney general have taken a toll on Richard Blumenthal’s debating skills. There were moments in tonight’s Hartford Courant-Fox61 Democratic senate...

Another politician, this time Mayor of Hartford Eddie Perez, has been arrested – for a second time – for having commited what would have been considered in the age of Tammany Hall politics as usual. The mayor has been arrested under RICO statutes , for trading his influence at city hall for discounted work on his Bloomfield Avenue home and attempting to extort money from a private developer for the benefit of Abraham L. Giles, once an influential North End politico. RICO legislation was designed to prosecute drug lords and criminals connected with the Mafia, but it has been applied for the past few decades by aggressive prosecutors to political crimes. The college professor who drafted the legislation said it should never be used to prosecute politicians. Mr. Perez's lawyer, Huber Santos claims the charges leading to the second the second arrest were filed “intentionally to defeat our ability to have a jury trial and vindicate the mayor of the charges that are pending.” He is as...

Tell the truth but tell it slant: That was poet Emily Dickenson’s advice. Applying the maxim to the Carlos Costa case, we get Tammany Hall epigrams from Carlos Costa’s lawyer, the forthright William Gerace: "He did what he did," said Gerace of Costa, his client, adding that the facts of the allegations against Costa aren't in dispute. It's the interpretation that's at issue. "Someone else will have to determine if he committed a crime or if he was trying to make a living," Gerace said, adding that what Costa did was grease "the wheels of business." Costa is the Hartford developer, now under arrest, who sought to grease the wheels of business by performing what he thought was cost free work on Mayor Eddie Perez’s house. The prosaic Hartford Courant put it this way: “According to arrests warrants, Costa has told investigators that he thought the allegedly free work was "the cost of me doing business with the City." At the ...

In a 60-30 roll call vote, the Senate has confirmed Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary. According to an Associated Press report: “On this vote, a ‘yes’ vote was a vote to confirm and a ‘no’ vote was a vote against confirmation. “Voting ‘yes’ were 49 Democrats, 10 Republicans and 1 independent. “Voting ‘no’ were 3 Democrats, 30 Republicans and 1 independent.” On Jan 23, the Hartford Courant reported: “The [Finance] committee vote [in the US Senate] came a day after Geithner appeared before the panel to apologize for what he called 'careless mistakes' in failing to pay $34,000 in taxes earlier in the decade, when he worked at the International Monetary Fund. “ Geithner paid the back taxes plus interest for the years 2003 and 2004 after being audited by the Internal Revenue Service. But he did not pay taxes he owed for 2001 and 2002, even though he had made the same mistakes for those years, until shortly before he was nominated by Obama last November to be treasury secret...

President Barrack Obama’s cabinet is firming up, and Markos Moulitsas, the progressive firebrand at DailyKos, is not on the list. Aiming for a cabinet of rivals , Obama has included New York Senator Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State, an appointment that has caused some controversy in the progressive barracks. It is supposed that Hillary the warrior was chosen to prosecute Obama’s military ambitions in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the government of which – at least that portion of it that remains uncorrupted – is on shaky grounds. Arnaud-de-Borchgrave advises against a re-deployment of troops to Afghanistan and, along the way, provides a delicious quote from outgoing President George Bush: "I know you believe you understood what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize what you heard is not what I meant." Back home in Connecticut, the Journal Inquirer reports that leaders of the Connecticut Community Providers Association, a group of non-profit agencies that d...

Mayor Eddie Perez of Hartford, availing himself of his constitutional right to protest injustice, has fired off a letter to the Hartford Courant lambasting the paper for allowing unfiltered “racist” remarks from commentators on its internet site. Anyone who has visited such sites knows that such sections of internet newspapers are full of bomb throwing, uncivil brutes who can’t spell. These too are exercising their God given constitutional rights to pull the hair pieces from the heads of politicians and whip them up in the air like the hats of naval colleges graduates. Hey, you don’t like it? Move to Cuba. Begin with the quite ordinary and unchallengeable assertion that newspapers are not blog sites and all of Perez’s objections seem reasonable. He is urging editors to monitor the comment sections and clean out the bar of brawlers and ruffians. Editorials in newspapers, always unsigned, are anonymous, and newspapers generally select which letters are to be printed. Letters are scrupul...

Behold – the great left wing conspiracy to overthrow the Clintons begins to unfold. John Kerry on the Clintons: “Well, I think you had an abuse of the truth, is what happened. I mean, being an ex-president does not give you license to abuse the truth, and I think that over the last days it's been over the top. Things have been said about Barack Obama's positions that are just plain untrue. It was said in Nevada, it's been said about Social Security, it's been said about Yucca Mountain, and it's been said in South Carolina. I think it's very unfortunate, but I think the voters can see through that. When somebody's coming on strong and they are growing, people get a little frantic, and I think people have seen this sort of franticness in the air, if you will. My sense is, Barack Obama offers a better opportunity to pull America together than any other candidate in the race.” The New York Times catches Ex-President Bill Clinton in a revealing Freudian slip. R...

Democracy, the ability of the people to throw the bums out, runs purest in Connecticut’s town governments, because US congressional districts in this and other states are gerrymandered in such a way as to frustrate the democratic instinct. British author Malcolm Muggeridge used regularly to vote against incumbents because, he reasoned, the challengers, whatever their political orientation, had not yet presumed to rob him of his assets, cluttered the legislative landscape with pointless laws and deprived him of his God given liberties. That impulse is as American as apple pie. Here in the good old USA, the presumption generally lies against incumbents, even as the ability to survive the storm of voter discontent lies in favor of incumbents. For reason other than gerrymandering, the carving up of districts so as to prevent the party out of power from gaining a foothold, some legislators in some districts will forever be secure in their sinecures. It is difficult to imagine what Democrat ...

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...

Some of Mayor Eddie Perez’s former supporters, notably among them Geraldine Sullivan, now running the mayoralty campaign of Democrat challenger Charles Mathews, have fallen away. Concerning Perez’s clumsy movements in the China shop of Hartford Democratic politics, Sullivan says, “This is a reign of terror.” Before Hartford moved from a city manager to a strong mayor form of government, the mayor, little more than a political decoration, was less terrible to factious Democrats who ran the city without ever having had to assume responsibility for their astounding stupidities. The new strong mayor came on like gangbusters. By flexing a little political muscle, he got himself appointed chairman of the Hartford board of education. His influence was apparent in the appointments of the police chief, city council, school superintendent and housing authority. Along the way, ever in a rush, Perez stepped on some corns, kicked some shins and broke some eggs. But you can’t make an omelet, as Wal...

In the pitch black of Connecticut’s pedagogical urban wilderness, a flickering candle is whipped by the wind.

What do Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons and Lincoln Chafee have in common? They were -- it now becomes possible to speak of them in the past tense -- all moderate New England Republicans. And they are all gone. Moderatism (if I can coin a word) has often kept Northeast Republicans in business in a political theatre that is overwhelmingly Democratic. Moderatism – some incorrectly called it pragmatism -- was the Republican’s River Styx; bathed in the waters of moderatism, Northeasten Republicans, afloat in a bitter sea of Democrats, seemed to be, like Achilles, invulnerable to attack. Until he was unhorsed by Joe Lieberman, Sen. Lowell Weicker was the very epitome of the Republican moderate, a rakish “maverick,” willing to “take on” his party in matters of grave principle, who often seemed to Republicans to be a liberal Democrat in a powdered wig. “Mavericks” are the party turncoats we like. Weicker was defeated, so it was thought at the time, because his treachery towards other Republicans h...