Advocate For Connecticut Business: Eliminate The Connecticut Business Advocate by Doug Wrenn

Advocate For Connecticut Business: Eliminate The Connecticut Business Advocate

By Doug Wrenn

June 01, 2007

It's not that our three cars are old, but we've named them, "The Nina," "The Pinta," and "The Santa Maria." One is fairly reliable, but will never win any beauty contest. The other only seems to run every other week and the third only has less than a year to live because it's so shot we intend to scrap it when the registration runs out. The fairly reliable car went into the shop yesterday for what we thought would be a few minor repairs in preparation for an upcoming out-of-state journey for a relative's wedding. Then the ominous phone call came in. Jalopy # 1, "The Nina," AKA: "Old Sort Of Reliable" has been given a death sentence. That now pretty much means we'll be renting a car to go to the wedding and our gift to the bride and groom will most likely be reduced to a "Spiderman" glass from a participating gas station once we cross the state line and fill up in Massachusetts. It's also now time to significantly trim our floundering fleet and buy something that actually runs. Never mind gas, have you priced even used cars lately? It's not that times are lean, but I plan to extract all my teeth tonight, put them under my pillow, say a Novena before I go to bed and hope that the Tooth Fairy is Catholic!

I'm a funny guy. I interpret and explain concepts visually more often than audibly. That is why I am so fond of analogies, but that also means that in the quirky way my mind works, one event is often the catalyst to make me think of another event. Because of my current car/financial dilemma, I suddenly recalled catching a glimpse of Senate Minority Leader Louis DeLuca affirmatively debating a $500,000 appropriation for the newly created Office of State Business Advocate during the coverage of the budget debate last night on CT-N. I'm so mad right now, I would go out and kick the tires on what I call "The Agony Of The Fleet," but with my luck, it would only cause further mechanical nightmares. Now, more than ever, I want a new car, and I don't want The State Business Advocate!

I have no axe to grind with Rob Simmons, the State Business Advocate. I'm happy he has acquired employment since leaving office, but with all due respect to the former good Congressman from the only part of Connecticut that is not just a big suburb of New York, I really wish he had acquired employment elsewhere. My beef is with the useless office, the further bloated bureaucracy and the further abhorrent waste of tax revenue in Connecticut, soon going the way of the dinosaurs that apparently once roamed Rocky Hill. If "Jody & The Taxocrats" had named Santa Claus, himself to this position, I would risk the coal in my stocking and still passionately rally against it.

I have heard it said that the Business Advocate and the State Department of Economic Development are separate entities with different functions and missions. Maybe so, but peanut butter and jelly still make a pretty good combination and they have much less in common than these two wastefully duplicated government entities. That concept is called consolidation, an obsolete premise once embraced by Republicans, like fiscal restraint. I have no problem with what Rob Simmons does. I just have a problem with where he is doing it.

I heard some of Congressman Simmons's testimony before the legislature a few months ago. He's a fireman. He puts out fires, and maybe a mechanic, if something is broken, he fixes it. In short, his job is to keep our merchants happy and prosperous. Call me crazy, but that sounds a lot like constituent service, often done by our legislators in their respective districts, before these whiz-bangs became preoccupied with such weighty legislative distractions as light bulbs, fatty foods and perceived cruelty to circus elephants, to name a few.

Bigger is not always better, and especially in government. Our defense, law enforcement and intelligence communities were not communicating with each other. Supposedly, that setting fostered the opportunity for 9/11 to occur. So rather than fix the problem by "reform," a word every politician now embraces, President Bush's answer was to create a whole new government agency, The Department Of Homeland Security, the largest government expansion in recent history, just so that a bunch of turf-happy incompetents would talk to each other, rather than having someone simply going in, taking names, kicking butt, and firing a few necessary examples for the rest of the bureaucrats to get the message and get back in line. And yet today, Mike "Katrina" Brown of FEMA infamy was discussing with Chris Matthews the current situation regarding a man with tuberculosis who was able to fly in and out of the US with very little inconvenience while the other poor schmucks trying to board were still busy putting their shoes back on. (Why Matthews wanted Brown's "expert" opinion regarding homeland security is beyond me. He would have been better off asking him about something he knows-like horses!) Brown criticized The Department Of Homeland Security and said it is too big and needs to be broken down into smaller sections. Ah-hah! The full circle has just been completed! You're once again doing a heck of a job, "Brownie." Extra oats for you!

Stick with me. I'm doing that "analogy" thing again. Meanwhile, back here in God's forgotten little few acres, AKA: Connecticut, we have a dying business culture, replete with dust bunnies and memories where our manufacturing base used to be, with businesses desperately struggling to survive like fish in the desert. It's not like no one knows what the problems are: excessive Draconian laws and regulations, oppressive and infinite taxes and fees and government intrusion into just about every aspect of business just shy of the color paint on the restroom walls. Government is not business. Let's face it; if people in government could run anything (other than stuff into the ground), they wouldn't be in government. In the news just the other night, the city of Hartford upped its (not so) "Grand" List to the point that some businesses will be taxed as high as an additional 40%, and according to one interviewed business owner, 89.9%. That's no coincidence. Poor, oppressive government trickles down from one level down to the next. That's called "Trickle Down Wreck-onomics." The astronomical taxation levels of the northeast states are one of several reasons why businesses, jobs and money have moved down south (besides the better barbecue), but few bureaucrats here seem to notice or be genuinely concerned about that disturbing and growing trend.

Forgive me, as I know I don't socialize in the right circles and tend to have the wrong labels on my clothing. I'm just a common man, burdened with common sense, but why do we need the Office of State Business Advocate? We now have a staffed agency, whatever the size, doing constituent work normally done by legislators, in a field duplicated by another state agency and in a spendthrift state with no desire to reform. Why waste the additional money? What is unique to this business crisis in our state? What can our Business Advocate, whoever he or she is, observe, identify, analyze and report to our Executive and Legislative Branches that which they don't already know? At the agency level, how can the current problems even be changed? And why does this newly created position, given our current fiscal state, need an additional half a million to do it even more? Call me crazy, but those scandalous $600 toilet seats for the Army several years back seem like a real bargain right about now.

Whether I agree or disagree with Senator DeLuca, I like him and I love hearing him speak. He's one feisty paesan. Heaven forbid he ever has to actually suppress a thought. He reminds me a lot of me. (Sorry, Senator!) I like straight talking people, who focus a little more on telling it like it is and a little less on losing sleep about offending the all-too-thin skin of many people today. Plenty of people already obsess about not hurting anyone's feelings. The truth, without any frosting on it, is often a refreshing change. Senator DeLuca was railing on about how everyone in state government worries about businesses and jobs. From that premise, in a "put up or shut up" kind of mode (but not in those words) he bridged the argument that the $500,000 appropriation should be granted, and that while such an amount sounds like a lot, it really isn't in the bigger picture.

While I enjoyed the Republican Senate Leader's convincing performance, I still wasn't convinced. No, in the bigger picture of state fiscal line items, a half a million isn't much. It's a drop in the state's bottomless bucket, but whether we are talking about $500,000 or five dollars, I just can't embrace this one for the reasons I already cited. I know the senator's reasoning. I don't suppose he is happy with our state's business climate, or the restrained partisan atmosphere in which he works. He is probably thinking that a piece of the pie is still better than none of the pie at all, but this is still another unnecessary expense. Reform the mission of the Department Of Economic Development, and let elected representatives from the General Assembly do the rest for the needs and problems of business owners in their respective districts and committee purviews. Adding more expense to address wasted expense seems to me to be an expensive waste times two. It's that whole legislator mindset that so often gets all of us into trouble. Lawmakers of any party just aren't happy unless they're making laws and spending money as opposed to repealing laws and cutting money. When we don't enforce laws already existing on the books, we create new laws. When people ignore a particular law, we increase the fine of the ignored law as if that is actually something the violators think about in advance. And yes, when we have inept, bloated government, legislators respond by adding more inept, bloated government to fix the already inept bloated government. I think it's called "Legislator's Disease." Whether it's local, state or federal government, the same inane tactics are always used, but just by different people. As former New York Mayor Ed Koch would say, "How am I doing so far?" If these guys sincerely want to help the people of Connecticut, they'll all just finally shut up, and actually go home for the summer. Government that governs best is government that is far away on vacation with sunglasses, a tacky Hawaiian shirt and sunburn.

The problem with our state's businesses goes beyond them not being able to compete. For businesses in our state, prosperity isn't a goal; it's a luxury. They struggle just to survive because whether you're talking about general cost of living, energy costs, fuel costs or government fees and taxes, they struggle to pay the bills, and many of those bills are directly or indirectly created or caused by government. Why add another cost for another agency onto that pile, and why further add to it with another half million dollars? Even if federal funds help subsidize this position, my trusty Rand McNally Road Atlas confirms my suspicion, that Connecticut is part of the United States, so when we talk about federal funds, vs. state funds, the taxpayer still pays, but from a different pocket in the same pair of pants.

Lou DeLuca is a big boy. He gets the gist and knows that it is what it is. OK, so he took a shot for what he thought he could realistically accomplish to hopefully bring some semblance of relief to our state's commerce community. There is a clearly a socialist mindset in Hartford by a large socialist majority in both houses and a governor who is a closet socialist herself. As the saying goes, "Even the best laid plans of mice and men sometimes go awry." Senator DeLuca, along with the rest of the Republicans in the legislature, is playing five-card poker with a hand of three cards. I understand that, but only a little government waste is like being only a little pregnant, and previous intentions don't change the present reality.

As for Rob Simmons, his role as State Business Advocate is also wasted for other reasons. When defeated by Joe Courtney, Simmons said he would run for his old seat again. When appointed to his current position by Governor Rell, Simmons said if nominated by the General Assembly, he would no longer pursue his seat in Congress. Considering what the Hartford Courant rightfully called a "shallow bench" last year, the pathetic, bleeding, gasping Connecticut GOP needs to look to the future and start doing some grooming. A Simmons vs. Courtney rematch for the 2nd Congressional District would probably be a coin toss. Chris Dodd is supposedly not running again and Joe Lieberman is damaged goods with the Democrats. He saved this last time only by desperate and exasperated Republicans who felt they had nowhere else to go. This was the second time Republican voters saved Lieberman. I'm not betting on the hat trick. I disagreed with Rob Simmons on some issues, and on a couple of them, vehemently so, but I got to know him a little bit and as I look around, I currently see no one in this state with the kind of weight and credentials Simmons has to be our next Republican US Senator from Connecticut.

Of course, what Simmons wants to do may be another story, but in time of war especially, I see no one else who has his kind military and intelligence background on a resume, as well as name recognition and ability to raise money and realistically get nominated and elected. I wouldn't go so far as to call Rob Simmons a conservative, but I don't think he would, either. He would probably tell you that he is a moderate. He is. I have heard many Republicans in this state call themselves "moderates." They're not true moderates, they're liberals. I have thus far have only met two true middle of the road moderate Republican candidates in this state. Rob Simmons was one of them. Agree or disagree with him on issues, but from a conservative viewpoint, Rob Simmons is more genuinely to the right than Nancy Johnson, Chris Shays, John Rowland and Jody Rell combined, even when the latter two are actually telling the truth. If Republicans in this state continue to insist on gratefully accepting only a piece of the pie, they could do worse than Rob Simmons, especially as our voice in Washington. While I do believe that Rob Simmons, with his characteristic work ethic and trademark endless Olympian energy will excel as State Business Advocate, despite my disapproval of the position itself, I also believe that his talents are tragically wasted in such a limited capacity as a government official who has far more to offer his state, and for that matter, his embattled and endangered country.

The Office of State Business Advocate belongs in the scrap yard and Rob Simmons belongs in Washington. And if brainstorms like The Office Of State Business Advocate are the best our elected officials can up with to resolve what Ross Perot would call a vast "sucking sound," as the rest of our state's commerce gets flushed away, then let these bureaucratic brainchildren all go work for Johnson & Johnson. Band-aids belong on paper cuts, not hemorrhaging economies. Besides, let someone else subsidize their socialist agenda and ineptitude. We, the strapped, burdened and beat up taxpayers of Connecticut need a break. And I need a car. Hopefully, I'll be able to find and buy one before "Comrade Rell" has another brainstorm and appoints an "Auto Czar," but please, let's not give her any more ideas.