Chris Powell: Last stand for Conn.'s private sector
With Quinnipiac University's final poll on Connecticut's election for governor calculating once again that the race is essentially tied, two conclusions may be drawn.
The first is that the supporters of petitioning candidate Joe Visconti, the gun-rights fanatic, are breaking somewhat in favor of the Republican nominee, Tom Foley, as they realize that Visconti has no chance of winning and that votes for him will be only protest votes.
The second is that the success of the Democratic nominee, Gov. Dan Malloy, will depend on mobilizing city voters, who are disproportionately tax consumers -- government employees and welfare recipients -- rather than taxpayers.
The decline in voter participation in non-presidential election years like this one favors Republican candidates. But since opinion polls under-represent the urban poor, who vote Democratic overwhelmingly, the governor probably already has the support of more people than the polls show and so he seems more likely to win.
Indeed, since the two major political parties are really just accumulations of interests rather than proponents of political principles, and since the candidates have avoided issues of substance, choosing instead personal attacks, contrivances, and hysteria -- the governor because his record is weak, Foley because his knowledge of government is weak -- this election is largely a contest between government itself and what remains of Connecticut's private sector. If Malloy wins it may be the final triumph of Connecticut's government and welfare classes, the triumph Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. felt he could not win when, having imposed the state income tax to rescue those classes, he declined to seek re-election in 1994.
But after imposing a tax increase even bigger than Weicker's and for the same purpose, Governor Malloy is seeking vindication. It will be construed as license for unlimited government and taxation.
The governor essentially confirmed as much in his comments to the NAACP meeting in Waterbury last weekend. "We did not balance our budget as other states did" by reducing financial grants to municipalities, he said. "Not a single teacher, not a single policeman, not a single fireman has lost his job because I took my problem and shifted it to Waterbury, Bridgeport, or New Haven."
This was also to say that by raising taxes and increasing financial grants to municipalities, the governor insulated their employees against union contract concessions just as he had insulated state government's employees -- that only private-sector workers have to sacrifice, their concessions being extracted via higher taxes.
The Democratic campaign also is touting to the most fearsome special interest, teacher unions, that the Malloy administration is fully funding the state teacher retirement fund, though this is only required by a law enacted under the governor's Republican predecessor and though it inadvertently demonstrates state government's perverse priorities. After all, no law guarantees public safety in Connecticut's anarchic cities, maintenance of the state's decaying transportation infrastructure, or group homes for the mentally retarded. No, inviolability attaches only to the pensions of teachers.
Since he has so little to say, Foley's election will be construed as mere repudiation of the governor and dissatisfaction with the state's lengthening hard times. The Republican will not be able to claim a mandate for any particular policy, having demonstrated little familiarity with or even interest in state government's operations. If he is elected that stuff will be assigned to the hired help.
As for Visconti, he has defaulted on tens of thousands of dollars in debt over the years and has posed for photographs bare-chested with odd expressions on his face, and still he sometimes has seemed more sensible and candid than his rivals. In this disgraceful campaign it might be hard to blame voters for wondering if guns really are the answer.
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
Chris Powell: Videotape cops at work all the time
(Apologies for the format problem on this) MANCHESTER, Coon. On the whole, police officers are far more sinned against than sinning, but that's why they're police officers, the ones with the badges and guns, the ones supposed to be the good guys. But it's a difficult job and indications are growing that many officers are not fit for it. Those indications -- largely the result of the new ubiquity of security and mobile-phone video cameras -- are getting scary. Several such indications have arisen from the recent rioting and demonstrations in Ferguson, Mo., where a white officer shot a young and unarmed black man. Of course, many people have rushed to judgment about the shooting. It is more plausible that the officer shot the young man while the young man was charging at the officer than that the officer shot him for fun. But rioting and demonstrations are no excuse for police to go wild. To the contrary, that's when police conduct must be most careful -- and in Missouri it hasn't been. The other day in Ferguson an officer was videotaped pointing his military rifle at peaceful demonstrators and news reporters, cursing them and threatening to shoot them until another officer led him away. The first officer was suspended. Another Missouri officer was suspended recently after a video of a lecture he had given was publicized. In the lecture the officer described himself as an "indiscriminate killer," adding, "I'm into diversity -- I kill everybody," and, "If you don't want to get killed, don't show up in front of me -- it's that simple." He has been placed on desk duty pending review. A third Missouri officer was suspended for commenting that the protesters in Ferguson "should be put down like rabid dogs." All three officers probably will go back on the beat when the controversy fades. There's not enough accountability in government. But Connecticut residents don't have to go to Missouri to worry about police brutality and psychologically unfit officers. Two months ago two Bridgeport officers pleaded guilty to federal civil-rights charges for their stomping an unarmed petty criminal as he lay helpless on the ground following his disabling by a stun gun. The assault was captured on video by a passerby. The city will pay the petty criminal $198,000 in damages and the two officers have resigned and have promised never to seek police work again. Enfield's Police Department is dealing with the heavy-handedness of an officer who has been investigated on complaints of misconduct 17 times in seven years. In the most recent case, cruiser dashboard video shows him pummeling a man said to be resisting arrest. The state's attorney won't prosecute either man. And last week cell-phone and security-camera video recorded a Hartford officer using a stun gun on a young man who had obeyed his command to stop and was standing still, hands at his sides, 10 feet away. The officer continued to advance on the young man and shoting the stun gun at him from 4 feet away. Even Gov. Dannel Malloy, speaking to a meeting of concerned citizens in Hartford, said he was shocked. The Hartford Police Department is investigating. For their protection and the public's, all police officers should be videotaped all the time -- and this would be easy to do, as there are not just dashboard cameras, already widely in use, but small cameras that can be affixed to uniforms and can record as much as 45 hours of image and sound. The recent death of a man who was choked to death during his arrest in New York City has prompted the city's public advocate, Letitia James, to propose equipping all city police with uniform cameras. Connecticut law should require this. If Governor Malloy really was shocked the other day, he should propose such a requirement before the November election. His Republican challenger, Tom Foley, should endorse the idea as well. It is a matter of basic accountability in government. Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
Chris Powell: Stop corporate welfare -- just extend gas lines
By CHRIS POWELL
MANCHESTER, Conn.
All the bluster about restoring economic growth in Connecticut won’t accomplish a fraction of what the Malloy administration accomplished the other day. The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority approved the administration’s plan to extend natural gas pipelines throughout the state so that as many as 280,000 homes and businesses might gain access to the cheaper and cleaner fuel over the next 10 years.
The cost of building the pipelines will be recovered by natural-gas companies mostly through surcharges on new business and residential customers. They’re not likely to complain, since gaining access to gas and converting from oil or electric power should save them far more money starting almost immediately.
Of course heating oil dealers are furious about state government’s facilitating gas, a competitor. But Connecticut is more reliant on home-heating oil than any state, much of that oil comes from abroad and thus is a drain on the national and state economies and a risk to national security, domestically produced gas is increasingly available, and the public interest in competitive energy sources is overwhelming.
Besides, state government facilitated the heating oil industry and the electricity industry when it built the roads used by oil trucks and utility poles. Insofar as the roads preceded the gas mains, the heating oil industry got its state subsidy first.
The less money it spends on foreign oil, the more prosperous Connecticut will become -- especially since businesses here complain that their biggest burden is not supposedly high taxes or excessive regulation but the cost of energy.
Indeed, Connecticut might be far better off if the state government did nothing for economic development except to build gas mains. Construction jobs would be created right away and financed from energy savings, those savings would keep many millions of dollars in the state, and businesses and households would be more prosperous.
By contrast, it’s hard to see how Connecticut will benefit from the Malloy administration’s distributing hundreds of millions of dollars in cash and discounted loans to companies for doing no more than promising to stay in Connecticut a while longer.
Even as the administration finalized its natural gas plan the other day, Governor Malloy was awarding $15 million to Pitney Bowes for staying in Stamford and planning to increase its employment by 200 over five years, or $75,000 per job, employment the company surely was planning anyway. Of course every company in Connecticut isn’t getting $75,000 from state government for every new hire, so this policy is grossly unfair and turns economic development into mere political patronage. It’s being called corporate welfare.
The administration seems cynically sensitive to such complaints, since, as the Connecticut Mirror recently reported, even as administration agents working for the Democratic Party are extorting political donations from state government contractors and employees of state-regulated companies all over the place, no donations of any size have been recorded from companies receiving those economic development grants.
While state law forbids state contractors from donating directly to the campaigns of candidates for state office, contractors can donate to a political party’s general committee and the committee can use the money to advance its candidates. This money laundering is what Connecticut Democrats call campaign finance reform. It is public campaign financing for just one party, the party in power. The Mirror found that Connecticut’s Democratic Party is leading the Republican Party in such fundraising by 10 to 1.
Are the Democrats targeting state government contractors and companies that are particularly vulnerable to regulation? A spokesman for the party replies, "We don’t discuss our fundraising strategy" -- which is what Connecticut Democrats may call transparency.
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.