Don Pesci: Conn. truck tolls and searching for journalistic balance

Truck tolls on Interstate 95 north in Rhode Island

Photo by Scientificaldan

Surely no one is surprised that Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has thrown his support to a trucks-only toll bill. {Rhode Island has already imposed truck tolls.}

Connecticut, according to a handful of media critics of the measure, needs a new source of revenue, pretty much for the same reason the prodigal’s son needed more dough from his dad. He overspent, drew down his allowance and took on debt, the way a sinking ship takes on water through a hole in its hull. If Dad can absorb the debt, there is no problem; he can in that case, quite literally, afford to be merciful. But if he himself has fallen on hard times, mercy comes at too dear a price. Connecticut is the prodigal’s father who has fallen on hard times.

The author of the new transportation initiative, we are given to understand from various news sources, is state Senate President Martin Looney, who seemed, only a short time ago, to have wrinkled his nose at the toll proposals then on the table for discussion, one of which was a trucks-only tolling scheme.

Democrats are now agreed that a new revenue stream is necessary and that Lamont’s rollout was defective. During his gubernatorial campaign, Lamont proposed truck only tolling; once elected, he proposed multiple gantries on major highways, about 58 gantries that would collect user fees from all road travelers. The new revenue source is necessary, Democrats continue to argue, because the Transportation Fund lock-box has been depleted – by legislators who, as it turns out, had diverted funds destined for the lock-box, dumping them into the General Fund so they might reduce the continuing budget deficits for which they absurdly do not claim responsibility.

This analysis barely scratches the surface, though it does point to the real problem. The real problem is that the ruling Democratic Party is disinclined to make long-term, permanent cuts in spending. Additional taxes, we all know, are always permanent and long term. If you raise taxes, you eliminate the disturbing need to cut spending. Additional ruinous taxation, at this point in Connecticut's descent into its three decades old death spiral, will help only politicians -- no one else.

Why are Democrats so averse to permanent, long-term cuts in spending?

They are operating, as we all do, on a pleasure-pain principle. All life on the planet tends to resist pain and welcome pleasure. Even a daisy raising its head to greet the morning sun operates on the pleasure-pain principle. So then, we should ask ourselves: which is more painful for the average Democrat legislator, incurring the displeasure of the many supportive special interests in his political universe, or incurring the much more defused displeasure of those people he claims to represent who will be adversely impacted by yet another tax?

Democrat legislators are supposed to represent the general good of the whole demos, not special interests such as state worker unions. That is the desideratum we find in textbooks on good government. If Connecticut could produce a Machiavelli and put him to work churning out editorials for most newspapers in the state, we should soon have a proper view of modern state politics. Chris Powell at the Journal Inquirer occasionally quotes Ambrose Bierce on this point. Bierce defined “politics” in his “Devil’s Dictionary as: “a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”

If that seems cynical, it is. But perhaps the state could use a strong dose of cynicism, purely as an emetic. In the golden age of Athenian democracy, cynics were the world’s first hippies: They questioned all authority. It may seem cynical to say so, but a questioning and contrarian posture is proper to good journalism. In fact, it is indispensable to good journalism. How, without a touch of cynicism, should journalists go about comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable? Journalism’s most deadly enemy is auto-pilot thoughtlessness and political sycophancy. There was a heroic journalist – whose name I have forgotten, so rare are instances of heroism in the field – who made it a habit of blowing his sources every five years or so because he feared falling into a slough of sycophancy.

Before we leave the question of cynicism, which is poorly understood, allow me to use the substitute term “contrarian.” We know a thing by contraries. If you want to know whether position A advances the common good, you cannot arrive at an adequate answer to the question without due consideration of position B -- B being “Not A.” Without a consideration of B, A will be accepted unreflectively without serious examination. In all areas of human life, we seek proportional balance. In Connecticut politics, we seek what has been called internationally a “balance of power.”

Indeed, I may observe parenthetically that both state and national constitutions provide a balance of power between three functions indispensable to democracy: the legislative power of writing laws, the executive power of executing laws, and the judicial power of judging laws. These powers should be separate and equal -- in a special sense. And they cannot be equal unless they are separate. Equality among the different departments is arrived at when each department is prevented from encroaching on the constitutional prerogatives of the other two departments. The powers are divided functionally so that each function may retain its integrity. That is constitutional balance. It is also good government.

The Sad Estate of Connecticut's Fourth Estate

The old Hartford Courant Building circa 1900. The Connecticut Courant began as a weekly on Oct. 29, 1764, started by Thomas Green. The daily Hartford Courant, which remains after many decades state’s biggest newspaper, traces its existence back to the weekly, thus claiming the title of "America's oldest continuously published newspaper", and adopting as its slogan, "Older than the nation."

It is important to bear in mind an adversarial balance when discussing, say, the proper relationship between political parties or the proper relationship between government and the media.

There is universal agreement that the relationship between the Trump administration and the national media is an adversarial one. Some wonder, however, whether in this instance the adversarial relationship is too much of a good thing. A judicious journalistic balance weaves like a battered boxer between too much and too little. Moderation in all things -- though Trump seems to be unfamiliar with the concept -- is still the golden rule. Then too, the chief pursuit of good journalism is the objective, politically unadorned truth, which ought never to be sacrificed to a strife of interests. Was the relationship between the media and the Obama administration an adversarial one? The frisson as Obama did what some saw as him pledging to do -- remake the United States from the bottom up -- was, as many of us remember it, mild to non-existent.

Coming back to home plate, is the relationship between Connecticut’s media and what we perhaps should call the Weicker-Malloy-Lamont administration – all three administrations favoring tax increases over long-term, permanent cost reductions – an adversarial one? On important questions of the day, are Connecticut editorialists and commentators truly objective? How many editorials in Connecticut papers may be described as objectively conservative?

Don Pesci is a columnist based in Vernon, Conn.

Chris Powell: Shakespeare, Bierce would have understood Rowland

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Having been convicted a second time on federal political corruption charges, former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland has people shaking their heads in wonder at why he didn't learn his lesson the first time, even as he was given a couple of pretty good jobs upon his release from prison, one doing economic development for his hometown of Waterbury, the other doing a radio talk show.

But it's hardly a mystery. Not all incorrigibles in Connecticut are fatherless young men from minority groups in the cities or boys who think they want to be girls only to end up as wards of the state Department of Children and Families. Every day Connecticut's courts are full of people amassing their umpteenth felony conviction, people who, to get into prison, had to work much harder than Rowland did -- and unlike Rowland's those cases are not compounded by the corruption inherent in political power.

The Meriden Record-Journal laments that people were "duped" twice by Rowland, "once by the young, up-and-coming Rowland and once by the older but not necessarily wiser ‘got religion' Rowland." But unless he was born corrupt and ill-motivated, there may have been no duping at all as he began his political career, just an ordinary vulnerability worsened by a ruinously expensive divorce.

Besides, it is hard to stay in politics in Connecticut for long without becoming cynical, since the very structures of government are greedy, fake, corrupt, or fostering of corruption, from binding arbitration of public employee union contracts to the control of professional regulatory agencies by the professions purportedly regulated. If Ambrose Bierce was still around he might use Connecticut as the example for his definition of "politics" in "The Devil's Dictionary": "A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles; the conduct of public affairs for private advantage."

It's not likely that Rowland was born corrupt, more likely that he simply did not have the moral strength to put himself at risk fighting a corrupt system, and, making his peace with that system -- putting his Republican affiliation largely aside and reaching a modus vivendi that proved even more profitable to the Democrats who controlled the General Assembly -- he became not only cynical but arrogant, and then just as venal as they already were, since they had been in power longer. He was just less careful about the details of the law.

Rowland seems to be considered unique in Connecticut for his downfall but he is not. A few decades ago U.S. Sen. Thomas J. Dodd, a Democrat, was even more corrupted by power -- taking bribes, converting campaign contributions to personal use, and evading income taxes while drinking himself into oblivion, leading to his censure by the Senate. But in his last two years in office, by selling his vote to the new national Republican administration of Richard Nixon, Dodd escaped criminal prosecution and now has a stadium named for him in Norwich and a research building and an annual prize named for him at the University of Connecticut.

Rowland, Dodd and others like them are only part of the oldest story in politics, as Shakespeare had Richard II explain:

... for within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,

Allowing him a breath, a little scene,

To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,

Infusing him with self and vain conceit,

As if this flesh which walls about our life

Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus

Comes at the last and with a little pin

Bores through his castle wall, and farewell, King!

-----

Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.

Complication and opaqueness breed corruption

  Respond by rwhitcomb51@gmail.com

 “In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.’’

--  Anatole France

Ambrose Bierce famously defined politics as the "strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.’’ There are people of principle in politics, but Bierce’s statement is a pretty good generalization.  The Founding Fathers would have generally agreed with it.

The Supreme Court’s  recent McCutcheon ruling, in which it struck down overall limits on campaign contributions by individual donors, is much less important than many have made it out to be. Yes, it’s true that yet more money will flow into the campaign cycle. And, yes, America’s oligarchs will continue to accumulate power, aided by the general public’s civic disengagement.

But money flows around campaign-finance laws as water flows around rocks in a river. I doubt if any limits have all that much effect. After all, look at the record since Watergate-era reform laws went into effect. There are so many monetary methods by which rich folks can influence politicians to help maintain or expand donors’ wealth and power. And as government has gotten bigger, there’s more and more reason to buy influence in it.

A couple of things, however, could level the playing field a little. One would be tougher (not more) laws mandating transparency in campaign gifts. If more voters could find out who’s giving what to whom, they’d be better able to make evidence-based decisions on Election Day. Back when I was a newspaper editor, I tried to find out who was funding an op-ed writer and/or the “public interest’’ group he/she was writing for and then note it at the bottom of their essays. Much of the time they turned out to be pushing an economic self-interest -- e.g., the climate-change deniers were paid by oil and coal companies, those fighting medical-malpractice reform were funded by trial lawyers’ associations. But all too often I gave up trying to find out. Deadlines!

Indeed, news organizations (most are understaffed) rarely try to discover the paymaster behind opinion pieces. And it can be very difficult to find out, though such organizations as Guide Star, FollowTheMoney.org and the Sunlight Foundation can sometimes help cut through the smoke from the smoke machines of economic royalists.

Another thing that could help reduce the prostitution in Washington is vastly simplifying the tax code, which has been endlessly complicated to please economic interest groups and do social engineering. The more complicated – and the perception it can be complicated even more – the tax code, the more donors are drawn to bribe members of Congress to manipulate it to the donors’ advantage.

Enacting a modified flat-tax system would dramatically reduce campaign corruption and free up vast amounts of time now spent to game the impenetrable code that Congress and the White House have given us over the decades. (Don’t blame the IRS – they’re just following orders.)

Likewise with other laws: The more complicated they’re made, the more campaign donors bribe elected officials to manipulate them and the regulations to enforce them. Complication favors corruption.

Finally, the majority of the public could, for a change, vote. Before that, they could study the issues, and find out who’s paying whom. But they probably won’t bother.

xxx

Let’s laud Rep. Tim Murphy (R.-Pa.), a clinical psychologist, for pushing what would probably be the biggest improvement ever in the federal government’s support for programs to address mental illness. It’s a complex measure but two elements stand out. One would put federal support behind court-ordered treatment of certain severely ill people (bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia victims particularly come to mind). Most states allow, in varying degrees, this sort of mandatory treatment, which is often the only thing that works.

The other thing is easing the disastrous federal law of 1996 that has made it almost impossible in many cases for family and other caregivers of mentally ill people to get actionable medical information on these sick people – and thus can make it almost impossible to treat them. Of course, this bleeds into the rest of the health-care system: Think of how many more overtly physical illnesses stem from mental illness.

xxx

How wonderful  finally to be able to walk around outside without four layers of clothing, to see a few more patches of green grass, more crocuses and even daffodils every morning, albeit on south-facing slopes. As the writer Bill Bryson noted, New England’s beauty is undermined by the difficulty of strolling in it for several months of the year.  I say that an old person for whom harsh weather becomes more inconvenient every year. Still, if winter weather slows the arrival of the Ebola virus, I’ll take it. Colder places are generally healthier places.

Robert Whitcomb is a New England-based writer, editor and business consultant.