Diddling in the legislature

Not a column goes by that I'm thankful again that Helen Ubinas returned from her journalistic fellowship a few years ago committed to write about Hartford and Connecticut.

Today she nailed Connecticut legislators and the governor for fiddling while Rocky Hill burns. Ubinas makes all the right points: it's a devastating economic environment, it's horrendously complicated, all sides on the issue are far apart. But she also points out that the legislators are fiddling, piddling and diddling while towns, which have no control over state tax revenue, wait, hats in hand while the lawmakers consider topics as far ranging as the paint balls and the death penalty.

The governors and legislators have no excuses. And they seem to be failing at what they will eventually have to do, compromise. This is the primary job they are elected to handle, and they aren't doing it.

It appears impossible for lawmakers to create a budget in time for towns to make reasonable projections. When that happens, the towns will be left holding the bag (they'll pass the bag to municipal taxpayers).

The light bulb and the moths

I knew when I saw the call-out box on the front page of the Courant this morning that Helen Ubinas turned over a big rock, and the ugly bugs were going to scatter.

And so, it's come to pass. The online commenters are rabid.

What's so appalling about the truth, that these ignoramuses have to hurl what little remains of their tiny minds against it in hopes that the futile noise the collision makes will somehow bring them a moment of fleeting glory. Like moths, they are suicide bombers hurling themselves against the light bulb in defense of darkness.

I know Helen's a big girl, and she can take it. It just makes me weary thinking about humanity, thinking about America.

Helen Ubinas wrote the truth. The murder of Johanna Justin-Jinich is a travesty. That she died at the hands of an unbalanced man with easy access to a gun who somehow hallucinated control over her is worse. But the coverage her murder attracted was way out of proportion to the coverage of other similar murders whose victims happened to be African-American.

That we are xenophobic as a culture, as an American culture, is an ugly truth. Did you hear about the Indonesian plane crash yesterday where 110 people died? Oh. How about the one that crashed in Guatemala last week killing six? Hmmm. How about the 95 children killed in a US-led strike in Afghanistan? Ninety-five kids. No, huh? Did you hear who one American Idol? Thought so.

It says something about you and me. It says something about what we care about. It says something about our press.

Ubinas is right. The murder of a young, educated, well-off white woman has, and will receive more coverage than the murder of a woman of color under similar circumstances. It doesn't make the murder of the white woman any less horrible. It just makes us moreso.

Life is precious and fragile. Murder is ugly and despicable. We need to worry about each murder, whether it's done on a sidestreet in a section of town that scares us, or its done on a street in a foreign country in our name, or its done in a bookstore three blocks from my house.

And I'm afraid the level of discourse evident in the comments section which follows Ubinas online column, is unhealthy in the extreme. It's gets us nowhere. It gets the Courant many visits to its web pages. It makes us uglier. It degrades the discourse. And while it reveals something about the people we live among, it hides them behind a screen of anonymity that is as frightening as it is sickening.

These commenters are sad, deluded people whose rage bubbles like bile between their teeth. Not a one of them brave enough to open their mouths and say such things to anyone's face.

It's not a free speech issue. It's a commercial issue. And it's time for the Courant to stop.

Sticking it to Amann

It's so good to have Helen Ubiñas back in town.

This morning in the Courant, she allows prospective gubernatorial candidate Jim Amman enough rope to hang himself, and predictably, he does:

But I thought I'd give him another shot at redemption, so after Tuesday's press conference I asked him one more time: Shouldn't a guy hoping to be governor have seen this conflict a mile away?With all due respect, he said, he just didn't see the conflict. Oh, man. Just when we've started to put the memories of Johnny Handout behind us, here comes Jimmy Paycheck.

In an editorial, the Courant calls into question the judgment of Amann and the person who was about to appoint him to a high-paying position, House Speaker Chris Donovan.

What lays at the heart of the controversy for most taxpayers is the fact that there are legislative staff jobs (for a part-time legislature, mind you) which pay $120,000 and generous state benefits. It demonstrates to Connecticut residents that hard work, competence, experience and intelligence have less to do with landing a cushy state job than does good political connections.

It shouldn't be surprising, but it's time state Democratic leaders walk the walk. They let Joe Lieberman off the hook saying they were following the example of Barack Obama of forgetting past transgressions and looking to the future. Yesterday, Obama set a huge example by repudiating the secretive cronyism of the Bush administration. This is an example Connecticut State Democratic leaders must embrace.

A fond (temporary?) adieu to Helen Ubinas

Courant columnist Helen Ubinas is off to a fellowship at Stanford University just as she was hitting her stride as a Hartford columnist, and apparently, just as she was experiencing capitol city burnout. He column today is a warning to everyone who lives and works in Hartford that leaving well enough alone is fine, but leaving not nearly well enough alone is dangerous. Her "farewell" column is dead center on the front page of today's Courant, and it is essential reading for anyone who thinks Hartford has a future that's brighter than the current bleakness.

Helen indicates that she'll be coming back, but given the nature of corporate owners trimming news staffs, and her obvious talent and marketability, I think we might see her name under a different masthead a year from now.

I'll miss her pointed criticisms of the feeble town fathers, and the lack of progress in a city that once was right up there with Boston, New York and Philadelphia.

Good luck Helen. It doesn't seem like you'll forget Hartford, but you may forget your way back here.