Though the Romney event certainly looked good on television, it is hard not to compare it to some of the images that emerged from President Barack Obama’s event at Florida Atlantic University on Tuesday. In that case, a 5,000-seat arena was filled to the brim with people watching the 44th President of the United States campaign for re-election his policy agenda.

The size of the room matters less when you challenge a sitting President of the United States because the stage is huge. It will take more than looking good on television to win; Romney needs to fill arenas full of people and then use his skills to blow the roof off the place with enthusiasm for his candidacy.

It won’t be easy but he has to do it because he is now engaged in hand-to-hand rhetorical combat with the President, an incredibly financed Obama campaign team, and the host of likely and unlikely combatants that will rise to join the fray.

One such unlikely combatant popped up in advance of the Romney visit. Andrew Doba, the Governor’s Communications Director, offered this pithy tweet about an hour before the former Massachusetts Governor was meant to take the stage:

Wondering which Cadillac @MittRomney drove down from Boston today??? #RomneyinCT#ctpolitics

The interjection again raises the question about what is going on amongst the “Malloyalists”. Though they’ve been dismissive every time the question has come up about Presidential and/or other higher political aspirations, they also keep doing things that provoke the question.

Not long after he was inaugurated, Malloy went on MSNBC’s popular show Morning Joe to pick a very public fight with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, saying, “Hopefully I take a slightly more intellectual approach to this discussion than Governor Christie has demonstrated.”

In the wake of Ted Mann’s twenty-part epic chronicling Gov. Malloy’s first year in office, some bloggers couldn’t help but note the connotation of learning everything there ever was to possibly know about Dannel P. Malloy except his shoe size: “Come 2016, the Democrats will be looking for a new hero. Who better than a man who overcame a learning disability, teasing, with roots in a small state? A man who looked the unions in the eye and told them to “get real”? Why look at our hero: He bleeds red, white and blue for the middle class. Dannel for President. Yoo hoo!”

Indeed the smoke signals seem to grow more frequent as time progresses. Commentator Patrick Scully paid heed in January after Malloy’s reaction to the current President’s State of the Union Address: “ . . . it puts Malloy on same stand as the president—not the same office—but certainly pointing out Obama and Malloy agree on a vision. As someone who used to write these statements, I would have question the wording; unless of course, that’s where the boss is heading.”

Fellow CTNJ contributor Terry Cowgill hit on the same theme when Mr. Malloy was clearly prepared to take a shot at Gov. Romney in the early hours of the Health & Human Services religious freedom/contraceptives controversy: “Monday on Morning Joe, Malloy looked decidedly less impressive than he did last summer when he attacked Paul in the wake of a hurricane that devastated Connecticut. This week, Malloy looked sort of like Christie sometimes does — a partisan hack sent out by party superiors to go after its enemies and defend its most controversial policies.”

Mr. Doba’s Twitter account is, of course, his own and he’s entitled to his own opinions as his page clearly notes. One could as easily assume that the Governor’s Communications Director offered the comment in an off-handed moment of pique. But he certainly knows his audience . That makes it much more likely that the effort to involve Dan Malloy in Presidential politics is just starting.

The challenges he faces there, as well as his shameful acquiescence to the entrenched public sector unions on personal care attendants and day care providers, show just how difficult it can be to be a reformer – even though reform is what is needed. I wrote about this for this week’s op-ed column at CT News Junkie:

The rhetoric from the teachers’ unions has flipped since January after they realized that Malloy might not trade reforms for dramatically more money. The resistance seems quite curious to the numerous private-sector employees for whom performance evaluations are the basis of pay raises, bonuses, promotions, or alternatively, being fired. The debate continues nonetheless.

Read the full piece at CT News Junkie.

Aside from this disparity and the empirical evidence that suggests the ineffectiveness of such efforts, it turns out there is one more problem with picking winners and losers: sometimes the winners you pick turn out to be losers. The most recent example is TicketNetworks CEO Donald Vaccaro.

According to the police report, Mr. Vaccaro is alleged to have groped the breasts of a female guest at an Oscars Party and engaged in an altercation with a security guard, whom Vaacaro is said to have called a “black motherf****r”.

His company, TicketNetworks, was to receive a $4.5 million loan through Gov Malloy’s First Five program to create between 200 and 600 jobs over the next ten years as reported by CTNewsJunkie.

News broke this morning that TicketNetworks will be withdrawing from program. The statement accompanying the announcement was revealing for another reason: “Due to the personal incident involving our CEO Don Vaccaro, we feel that it is necessary to respectfully withdraw from the FirstFive program in an earnest attempt at preserving our future relationship with the state.”

They expect the state to crawl back into bed with them at some point in the future? Unbelievable.

A lawyer’s office in Denver forwarded me this infographic on the possible benefits of driverless cars:

Source: Law Offices of Daniel R. Rosen.

The technology has advanced by leaps and bounds since the publication of O’Toole’s book. Google, always at the vanguard of everything technology, claims to have already traveled 140,000 driverless miles and other companies like BMW and Audi are experimenting with their own prototypes.

The best thing about the research and development, not to mention future production of the software, is that you could literally do the work anywhere on earth that has a wi-fi connection, a power outlet, and a road. There is no reason that Connecticut, a state with a high concentration of college educated individuals, close proximity to sources of venture capital, and the inherent complexities of roads in New England, could not become a mecca for this work. The state should be able to attract this kind of innovative research.

At the moment, however, much of it is taking place in California’s Silicon Valley. But as California’s fiscal house continues to burn, other states are making plays in this arena. Just last week Nevada became the first state to promulgate regulations governing driverless car testing in the nation and copycat proposals have appeared in Florida and Hawaii. Connecticut should get in the game, too.

R&D-friendly regulations would be a good first step but creating a business climate of innovation and entrepreneurship would be an even stronger magnet. As I wrote this week in my CT News Junkie column, that isn’t the course being pursued by current public policy:

The state’s current economic development strategy, in which Gov. Malloy and his administration pick winners and losers through programs like First Five or fortunate vacationing, seem unlikely succeed in this effort. Fostering this kind of innovation requires the kind of economic development work that is often eschewed by politicians hoping for big wins on their watch – things like driving down utility prices, taxes, insurance, and regulatory compliance costs.

If Connecticut is going to compete and win in the evolving economy, the state’s public policy must make us faster, smarter, and more willing to embrace change than anyone else in the world. It is going to take substantive changes to the status quo to generate these characteristics.

Since Labriola was elected as chairman by the members of the Republican State Central Committee this summer, records show he has raised $91,634 in individual political donations through Dec. 31, with $18,693 coming during the final month of the year alone.

The piece goes on to note the similarly thin wallet of the Connecticut Democratic Party which enters the year with $72,500 on hand. But really, it isn’t time to panic just yet for anyone.

While fundraising is an important measure of electoral competitiveness and can be a key indicator of future strength or weakness, the year-end numbers (XLSX) can be quite deceiving. The 2011 figure for CTGOP combines the account totals for the party’s federal and state accounts to reach the $13,000 amount – $13,108.18 to be exact.

The Republican state party has had less money going into previous election cycles. Heading into 2005, for example, the state party had $5,788.21 on hand as well as $85,988.36 in debt. In 2009, CTGOP had $41,124.42 but debts of $34,043.26. In the 2010 report, CTGOP’s cash-on-hand was $38,147.63, but it owed $84,938.08 in outstanding debts.

None of these facts makes one Chairman good or another one bad. Nor do they reflect on how effective one CTGOP team was in contrast to others. What they describe is the situation each iteration of the party found itself in at the time.

One other note: campaign finance law is byzantine at best and a tragicomedy at worst. If offered a blank page and a pen, no sane person would ever construct the regulatory landscape that currently exists. The law has evolved over time as the influence of political parties was diminished and the strength of candidates and now SuperPACs has increased.

This makes easy comparisons between different years both more difficult and less relevant. The centers of political power have shifted and the roles of the organizations change over time. Whereas CTGOP would once have been the central organizing point for Republican campaigns in the state, the party now acts mostly as a service bureau for Town Committees and local activists. Again, its neither good nor bad – just the way it is until the law changes again.

One proposal for closer examination should be the “Rethinking Redistricting” plan proposed by former Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita in September 2010. The plan was based on five principles: keeping communities of interest together, creating more compact and geographically uniform districts, reduce voters’ confusion about who represents them by following existing political boundaries, not use political data, including incumbent addresses, for partisan reasons, and “nesting” house districts into senate districts.

In sum, the concepts represent an entirely practical approach to the redistricting process. Rather than protecting incumbents or catering to other narrow political interests, like candidates for higher office sitting on the commission that redraws the districts, this approach would depoliticize the process and make it much more accessible for citizens.

One particularly intriguing principle is the concept of nesting, in which State House Districts would be drawn as subsections of a State Senate district, and if one were so inclined, State Senate districts would be drawn as subsections of Congressional districts.Twelve other states require nesting in some form and Connecticut should carefully consider whether it would produce more sensible maps in our state as well.

Read the entire piece at CT News Junkie.com

The current education architecture, though, too often churns out people ill prepared for this brave new economic world. Though reforming this system is at the top of Governor Dan Malloy’s 2012 legislative agenda, the opening gambit from the Connecticut Education Association this week suggests that the path to real reform could be much more challenging than anyone imagines.

. . .

There are fundamental traits to be recognized in an economy that constantly replaces labor with capital. The only stable employment is self-employment. The new nimble is the new normal. The path to prosperity starts by engaging technology, then troubleshooting it followed by creating and designing it, and ultimately investing in it. Most importantly, all of it is dependent on a population that has smarts, speed, and a willingness to embrace change – the byproducts of a high quality education. Reform can’t come soon enough.

Read the whole piece at CT News Junkie.

The University of Connecticut’s recent tuition hikes, though, will make it more difficult for thousands of students to rise to meet this challenge.

Read the full story at CT News Junkie

As I noted previously, pilots and passengers inside the marooned aircraft described a scene of barely restrained chaos. At one point, a pilot advised Bradley officials not to send police to the airplane for fear of provoking an altercation. He later requested officers board the plane to pacify passengers. It took more than seven hours to get all of the passengers off the airplanes.

The federal Department of Transportation hosted a forum on flight diversions last week to analyze the events that transpired and discuss new procedures to prevent such delays in the future. The look back added even more of that day’s sorry story to the public record:

“The storm knocked out power to the airport several times during the day. Luggage belts quit working. Tugs that move planes out of the way couldn’t get traction on the ice. Planes had trouble refueling and de-icing because of the power outages, preventing departures.”

It reads like a Keystone Kops routine.

Read the full article at CT News Junkie.

Read the entire opinion-editorial at CT News Junkie.