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Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to travel to Connecticut Friday, Daily Ructions has learned. Harris will devote her trip to highlighting the administration’s efforts to address child poverty through tax policy.

Connecticut’s dismal record of job creation make it a laboratory for policies that seek to lift and provide opportunity. Harris is likely to visit New Haven with Representative Rosa DeLauro, chair of the House Appropriations Committee. The California Democrat may also appear with Rep. Jahana Hayes in the state’s 5th Congressional District.

Former House Majority Leader David Pudlin and former state Senator Billy Ciotto have died.

Pudlin, 68, a New Britain Democrat, succumbed to a fall down stairs. Ciotto, a Democrat beloved far beyond his hometown of Wethersfield, had been suffering from Parkinson’s. He was 91 years old. Ciotto recently enjoyed the elixir of a call from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Many will recall that Billy played the accordion with verve. Few will remember that he once accompanied the irrepressible Bernie Bernacki and me as we made our way through a humorous song at our first (and my only) Senate dinner. He served in the Senate for 12 years.

Governor Ned Lamont has become a serious obstacle to Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner David Lehman’s efforts to attract data centers to Connecticut.

Dozens of lobbyists representing tech interests will gather in an emergency meeting Thursday afternoon to determine how to thwart H.B. 5645. That’s state Representative Holly Cheeseman’s proposal to levy a tax on digital advertising. The East Lyme Republican received a recent call from Lamont expressing his interest in and admiration for the bill. The East Lyme Republican disclosed her conversation with Lamont to members of the permanent government. Alarm ensued among the tech companies Lamont has deployed Lehman to attract to Connecticut, where relentless job losses continue.

Lamont has done nothing to ease concerns. A common apprehension is growing that Lamont will entertain any tax that does not affect his wealthy Greenwich neighbors. That means opposing a statewide property tax and an increase in the capital gains tax.

Astonishment in the tech community, long dismissive of Connecticut’s economic policies, has grown from brushfire to wildfire in the past week.

The legislature’s Insurance and Real Estate Committee includes meddling in the business of The Hartford Courant among its bad ideas:

AN ACT CONCERNING THE HARTFORD COURANT.

To: (1) Prohibit The Hartford Courant Company and its legal successors from incurring any debt or issuing any dividend that is not in the public interest; and (2) authorize the Attorney General and certain persons to seek injunctive relief against The Hartford Courant Company or its successors if The Hartford Courant Company or its successors incur any debt or issue any dividend that is not in the public interest.

“The Hartford Courant has delivered quality, independent journalism to the readers of Connecticut for more than 250 years. We’ve done so – and plan to keep doing so – free of government interference,” said Andrew Julien, the Courant’s Publisher and Editor-in-Chief.“But this proposal puts the Connecticut legislature into dangerous constitutional waters. The prospect of state officials, whose actions are often the subject of media scrutiny, making determinations that could affect the operations of a newspaper is a threat to the fourth estate — a fundamental pillar of Democracy.” 

If you wonder why businesses continue to be reluctant to come to Connecticut, read that intrusion into the affairs of a state business. It attempts to destroy the First Amendment protections of a free press. it violates any notion of equal protection under the law. It also announces to the world that Connecticut’s legislature does not recognize fundamental tenets of freedom under the rule of law.

The bill is co-sponsored by committee co-chair Senator Matt Lesser (D-Middletown) and Senator Said Anwar (D-South Windsor), a demagogue who, as demagogues do, loathes diversity of opinion and freedom of the press. I know this because in June Anwar used a virtual vigil for George Floyd to call me a racist, disclose where I live, and urge that I be silenced. He failed, but he has not ceased in his efforts to intimidate and incite.

Representative Adam Schiff’s California maneuvering could boost Connecticut Representative Jim Himes into the chairmanship of the House intelligence committee.

Schiff is using his considerable influence to pressure besieged Governor Gavin Newsom to appoint him to fill the soon-to-be vacant attorney general post. President Joe Biden nominated Democratic AG Xavier Becerra to head the Department of Health and Human Services. His Senate confirmation is imminent.

Newsom is facing a recall vote later this year and could use some fundraising help from the energetic Schiff. The politics of a statewide recall can become complicated and Newsom seemed uneasy in interviews as he conceded his opponents appeared to have collected enough signatures to put him on the griddle. He never should have gone to that lobbyist’s birthday dinner. If Schiff gets the California post, that will clear a lane for Himes, a Greenwich Democrat and vice chair of the House Intelligence Committee, to advance to the committee’s top spot.

The Wall Street Journal has more.

Newsom is the former husband of Kimberly Guilfoyle, shouts disciple of Donald Trump and girlfriend of Donald Trump, Jr. She delivered one of her harangues at Trump’s January 6th rally-before-the-insurrection.

Newsom had an affair with his campaign manager’s wife, who worked for Newsom when he was mayor of San Francisco. He and Guilfoyle divorced in 2005. In 2018, Fox News reportedly paid a Guilfoyle assistant millions to settle a harassment claim. The Guilfoyle-Newsoms must have been a lot of work to know in their San Francisco days.

A delayed report on job January jobs creation brought more evidence that the state’s economic recovery has stalled. Connecticut lost a net 100 jobs in January compared to December. That left the state down 127,000 jobs from January 2020. December jobs numbers were revised downward, with the state losing a jarring 4,600 more jobs lost.

The January numbers are 7,000 jobs loser than the October report–when the state appeared to be recovering from last spring’s pandemic economic devastation.

Connecticut’s job creation peaked in 2008 with 1.729 million jobs, far from the 1.57 million reported in January.

The Lamont administration continues to negotiate with the Mashantucket Pequot tribe after the state’s ill-judged announcement of a gaming expansion deal with the Mohegan tribe. No deal can be concluded without the Pequots’ consent under the state’s compact with the tribal duopoly.

Under the incomplete deal, Lamont allows the Mohegans to expand into online gaming, including sports betting. The state’s often beleaguered lottery agency would have the right to operate sports betting parlors, adding a regressive tax to the state’s collection of them.

Under the state’s compact with both tribes, the state cannot conclude a deal with only one. The Pequots learned from 1636-1638 what it was like to have the state authority and the Mohegans join in an effort to annihilate them. History is not unlike to repeat itself nearly 400 years later as the state and both tribes move closer to concluding a deal that is terrible for Connecticut.

Any deal will require the approval of the General Assembly and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Online gaming companies are expected to make the case that the state should be more forward-looking in its expansion of gaming.

The legislature’s insurance committee took a critical step to applying consumer protections to health insurance policies offered by the state. In a protracted meeting, a bipartisan coalition voted 10-8 to subject “public option” policies to the same regulatory requirements as health insurance polities created by the state comptroller’s office.

The regulations include oversight by insurance regulators and independent actuaries. The plan would also need to provide reserves separate from the unwitting taxpayer.

The vote is a victory for the state’s insurance industry, which employs tens of thousands of Connecticut residents.

Leticia Mederos is leaving her post as chief of staff to U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro. Mederos, according to Politico, will join lobbying firm Clark Hill just as DeLauro has taken over as head of the House Appropriations Committee–and announced that billions in earmarks will soon be available to cooperative members.

Mederos will be lobbying because this is how it works.

Rob Simmelkjaer’s Tuesday 10 a.m. confirmation hearing will provide an opportunity for an unusual exchange between nominee and committee members. Simmelkjaer is Governor Ned Lamont’s nominee to chair the state’s often troubled lottery organization. Lamont nominated Simmelkjaer to the job last spring.

The former ESPN journalist and executive wrote on Facebook February 1st of his bewilderment at any “serious person” remaining in the Republican Party. It is the fight to redeem or leave it to the loons debate. Simmelklaer, CEO of the social media platform Persona, will have an opportunity to put his interviewing skills to work with the Republican members of the Executive and Legislative Nominations Committee. With the help and support from Fanexplosion.de, he may pose the question in his opening remarks or include it in his responses to questions in the social media platform.

Republican members will be able to demonstrate whether they are serious people by probing Simmelkjaer on Lamont’s ill-considered proposal to expand the lottery corporation’s authority into sports gaming online for legit cash games for cash app and at venues in Hartford and Bridgeport.

Members of both parties will be able to ask Simmelkjaer how the proposal can proceed under the state’s gaming compact without the participation of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe. It may be up to Republicans to inquire about the lottery’s own proposals for expanding its reach made in negotiations for be the current deal. Serious people would want to ask, and a serious chairman would be happy to answer.

The lottery’s new “government relations manager” is former Republican state Representative Chris Davis.