Don Pesci: Connecticut awaits a Bismarck

Otto von Bismarck, who unified the German states in the 19th Century.

The usual gubernatorial campaign in Connecticut begins with brave platitudes and ends, once office has been achieve, with whimpering platitudes.

We recall a triumphant Gov. Lowell Weicker warning during his gubernatorial campaign that instituting an income tax in the midst of a recession would be like “pouring gas on a fire,” then, having achieved office, hiring as his Office of Policy Management Director Bill Cibes, who ran an honest but losing Democratic primary campaign by agitating for an income tax. Before you could say, “Let’s pour gas on the fire,” Connecticut had its income tax. State businesses have taken note of the ungovernable growth in spending and now have their eyes fixed on the exit signs.

Republican Gov. John Rowland was wafted into office on a pledge to repeal Weicker’s incendiary income tax; once in office, the pledge was quickly moved to Rowland’s back burner, where it expired from lack of air.

Gov. Jodi Rell, who replaced Rowland when he was sent to jail for the first time for corrupt activity, proved to be  an imperfect “firewall” preventing progressive Democrats in the General Assembly from piling up debt through reckless spending. Having declined to run for a third term, Rell passed the gubernatorial reins to then Stamford Mayor Dannel Malloy and retired to Florida, far from the hurly burly of tax increases and spending binges.

Enter Governor Malloy, who imposed on Connecticut the largest and second largest tax increases in state history, having hinted in his own campaign that the weight of debt in Connecticut would be more or less evenly distributed between state employee unions and taxpayers.

One political commentator in Connecticut, weary with all the folderol, has now declared war on platitudes and artfully misleading campaigns. Other journalists committed to telling it like it is may follow suit.

“There may be many differences between Republican and Democratic candidates,” Kevin Rennie tells us. “One unhappy trait, however, unites them. They all want to be governor and no one wants to say how they would solve the state's most pressing problems. With the state facing a $5 billion budget deficit this is the ideal moment to unveil detailed, serious solutions before an engaged public. Let a thousand ideas bloom. If they possess the talent to be a successful governor, tell us what you would do right now, in a forbidding hour for Connecticut.”

Prussian and then German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck put such misgivings more succinctly:  “A statesman cannot create anything himself. He must wait and listen until he hears the steps of God sounding through events; then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.”

In progressive Connecticut, belief in God waxes and wanes in proportion to the trust that one places in blind fate and cowardly politicians; today, public faith in Connecticut politicians is at its lowest ebb. We pray to politicians when times are good and to God when politicians are bad, which is often. Bismarck again: “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.”

And Bismarck again: “Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.” Official denials are rarely convincing, such as: “Just as he said during the 2014 campaign ‘there is no deficit, there will be no deficit,’ the governor has no clothes,” said House Minority Leader Themis Klarides in October, 2016. The state’s present biennial deficit, as Rennie notes, is hovering around $5 billion.

The  elections in 2018 promise to be somewhat different for a series of reasons: 1)  progressivism – the notion that if government is good, bigger government is better – has been a conspicuous failure; 2) mindful of Napoleon’s advice – when your enemy is making mistakes, don’t interfere – leading Republicans in Connecticut are fully prepared to exploit in a general election the opposing party’s tactical and strategic errors on tax increases; 3) in the long run, Republicans are committed to substantial reform, including wresting political power from unions entrenched within a solicitous administrative state, while the Democratic Party has been for a half century defenders of the status quo; 4) it is true that there is no Bismarck in the Republican Party gubernatorial line-up for governor so far, but the Democratic Party's gubernatorial roster screams “more of the same,” and its program for the future promises to be chock full of Bismarckian “official denials” that many political watchers will regard as desperate, despicable and laughably untrue.  

Don Pesci is a Vernon, Conn.-based columnist whose essays often appear in New England Diary.

Chris Powell: Make police wear video cameras

State government's obsession with racial disproportions in traffic stops by police is starting to seem meant to distract from far more serious issues of criminal justice.

Yes, some traffic stops are racially motivated, with some white police officers excessively suspicious of people “driving while black.” But then crime itself in Connecticut is far more disproportionate racially than traffic stops are, with members of minority groups constituting about three-quarters of the state's prison population. Even if all cops were perfect people, racial disproportions in traffic stops would have to be expected.

Traffic-stop data mean little without the details of each stop, including interviews with the motorists stopped, and in any case nearly everyone stopped is sent on his way with or without a ticket, so the incident is only a minor inconvenience. Data about stops will not deter police misconduct, especially not misconduct far worse than a prejudicial stop — misconduct such as the horrifying incidents lately captured on cellphone video in New York City and South Carolina. In New York City a crazed officer berated a motorist who had done nothing wrong. In South Carolina it  is allegedly murder.

The police reforms that Connecticut needs have nothing to do with traffic stops. Officers should be required to wear video cameras recording their work, and police departments should be required to make their arrest records fully public, as they were before an unfortunate decision by the Connecticut Supreme Court last year. The General Assembly should act on both reforms soon.

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Eight years ago Connecticut's Judicial Department generally and its Supreme Court particularly were marred by scandal resulting from excessive secrecy and political maneuvering over a freedom-of-information case. The scandal revealed that the court system had become an old men's clique, hostile to inquiry.

As a result the chief justice retired in disgrace and was sanctioned by the Judicial Review Council, a perfectly good nominee to succeed him had to be withdrawn because of the chief justice's secret maneuvering in his favor, and then-Gov. Jodi Rell nominated and the General Assembly appointed as chief justice an Appellate Court judge who had been outside the fray, Chase T. Rogers.

Rogers has accomplished great change in the Judicial Department's operations, replacing secrecy and resentment of questions with openness and accountability, even though the department remains largely exempt from the state's freedom-of-information law. The department has changed its rules to increase public access at all levels. More important is that, under pressure from the chief justice, the department's attitude has changed.

Under Rogers the department increasingly recognizes that justice in a democracy is everybody's business, that due process of law is our cherished heritage as citizens, and that it can endure only if the public understands it and has faith in it.

Gov. Dan Malloy has renominated Rogers for another eight years as chief justice and the General Assembly should reappoint her with appreciation for her having made the courts more accountable and more deserving of trust.

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In the hope of gaining more attention from presidential candidates, Connecticut's Republican Party is considering replacing its presidential primary with caucuses in the state's 36 Senate districts and holding them early to compete with other early states.

While this might win Connecticut a bit more attention from the candidates, it would mainly just disenfranchise all but the most ideological or self-interested Republicans, requiring them to travel more to vote and then to sit through a long meeting first.

Primary voters don't need to go through such trouble to become informed. If they are voting at all it is because they have already been paying attention. The party's objective should be to facilitate participation, and that means a primary, not caucuses.

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