If you are not confused by some recent actions by the powerful, you have not been paying attention.
Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch, a bit of a dim bulb with a bad temper, is upset about the number of shootings that continue to make life in the state's largest city a burden for many who live there. Summer weekends in Connecticut cities have become a roll call of misery and carnage. Demographics, poverty and the breakdown of the family are some factors at the root of violent crime. The availability of guns is often cited by Finch and other politicians as a constant threat to public safety.
The orthodoxy of gun control advocates diminishes when it collides with other interests. Bridgeport may be tormented by violence, but the mayor is delighted to welcome a purveyor of weapons to the city. Earlier this month, Finch and many other officials celebrated the announcement that a Bass Pro Shop will be built in Bridgeport.
The sporting goods store provides entertainment to shoppers while they ponder and make purchases. Its 150,000-square-foot Bridgeport store will be built on the city's grim waterfront, serving, officials hope, as an attraction to other businesses.
No business, it seems, comes to Connecticut without some public assistance. A piece of the Bass Pro deal in Bridgeport has been how much taxpayers will contribute to the project. Gov.Dannel P. Malloywas at a celebration ballyhooing the state's role in making it happen. No one said much about the guns and ammunition the store sold, nor federal allegations of its troubling history of discriminating against minority applicants looking for jobs..
A week ago, Bass Pro was revealed as one of the stores where accused mass murderer James Holmes purchased a Remington shotgun and one of two Glock handguns he is alleged to have used to have killed 12 and wound 58 at a Colorado movie theater on July 20.
The next time a Connecticut politician starts proposing new ways to limit the availability of guns, ask him what he thinks about the public paying for Bass Pro to sell them in Bridgeport.
The day before Malloy headed for a swank Christmas celebration in Los Angeles with the Democratic Governors Association, he held a rare Sunday press conference to announce that some state employees appeared to have engaged in fraud when they applied for emergency benefits in the aftermath of tropical storm Irene last summer.
Malloy vowed that he would not tolerate state employees misusing the program. Offenders would be prosecuted and fired. He was angry and wanted the public to know it before he alighted to Beverly Hills to raise money for political campaigns. Most of those who Malloy fired have been reinstated.
Anger at injustice has its limits among politicians. Last month, United Technologies Corp., an important company in Connecticut, pleaded guilty to breaking a 1990 federal law prohibiting the sharing and/or sale of sophisticated weapons technology with China.
Company subsidiaries provided technology that was later used for China's attack helicopter programs. Giving military secrets to other countries used to be treason. UTC paid a $75 million fine, apologized for lying to the government, and promised not to do this ever, ever again. The investigation continues, according to the U.S. attorney's office, but no individuals have been arrested. Those secrets didn't walk themselves to Beijing.
Malloy did not call a press conference to condemn UTC for betraying the nation's security. It won't be mentioned when he hands over millions to stem to flow of UTC jobs out of the state.
Last year, Malloy gave $20 million in public funds to financial behemoth UBS to move only some of its jobs out of Stamford. The New York Times' James Stewart's devastating recitation of UBS's bad acts probably would have made no difference handing over taxpayer money to the bank, but it's unsettling to think public resources are being given to the creeps. Among the plague of bad banks, Stewart writes, "UBS is in a league of its own given its track record for scandals."
UBS has been involved in recent years in diamond smuggling, municipal bond rigging, interest rate fiddling, billions in fraud. Meet your partners in bringing business to Connecticut, the winners in Connecticut's brand of crony capitalism.
Kevin Rennie is a lawyer and a former Republican state legislator. He can be reached at kfrennie@yahoo.com.
