The state gravy train

As content in the Hartford Courant gets lighter and lighter, it's with pleasure that I look forward to Sunday and the newest revelation of state malfeasance from Jon Lender, Kevin Rennie and now our old Middletown reporter Josh Kovner, who's showing his skills as an investigative reporter.

I started my career, post Hartford Times stringer, in the State of Connecticut Labor Department (Unemployment Compensation Division). During the mid-seventies recession is was a place of refuge for recent grads who couldn't find a "real" job. If I knew then, what I know now, I might have considered a career as a state employee. In those days, the lack of competitive compensation was ameliorated by a generous benefits package.

Unfortunately, most state employees labor their entire careers in modest-paying bureaucratic jobs, but apparently there are a chosen few, like some at the UCONN Medical School, who are allowed to double-dip, or who win contracts, as Kevin Rennie points out, that seem fit for royalty.

And as Josh Kovner demonstrates, our worst instincts are true. Our state legislators, by and large, have no idea how to work in the real world, so even when their stints as legislators, and legislative employees are through, they're given per diem contracts so they can hang around the Capitol and bask in the reflected glory.

I'm beginning to think that the idea of a part-time legislature, with amateur legislators who eventually return to real-world jobs, is a pipe dream which we will never wake from. After all, how can we expect the chickens to come home to roost when the foxes are guarding the henhouse.

Losing faith in political leaders close to home

(State Dem leaders laugh at you.)

Don't let the dreamlike optimism of Barack Obama's impending inauguration lull you into a false sense of complacency that the Democrats who represent you are "the good guys."

There's plenty of evidence right here in Connecticut this week that power and money are the fuels which power our professional political class.

First we learned how new Connecticut State House Speaker Chris Donovan, a man whom the Hartford Courant portrayed as motivated by high ideals and progressive policies, stooped to insider politics immediately by hiring former Speaker James Amann as a $120,000 adviser. Amann, who is running for governor, will have his new salary paid by you and your fellow taxpayers.

Read Colin McEnroe on Donovan's first betrayal of his "ideals."

And today, the Courant reports twice about the ongoing misdeeds of powerful Democratic State Senator Thomas Gaffey. The reports reflect badly on Senate Democrats who refused to take up an investigation of Gaffey. It also indicts Senate leader Don Williams, to whom Gaffey is a trusted adviser, and the Elections Enforcement Commission, which seems to be leaning toward a toothless negotiated settlement.

This has lead Republican Party Chairman Chris Healy to request that Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane launch a criminal investigation into Gaffey's actions.

If the facts are true, that Gaffey double-dipped for years into his PAC, and state funding for his ongoing political expenses, then the Senate ought to drum Gaffey out. Instead, they seem to be protecting him. Read what Kevin Rennie has to say.

These are the Democrats who will "save" us from Republican Governor Jodi Rell, and the punitive politics of the Bush era.

Right.

Civil rights and wrongs

Kevin Rennie is that rare commodity - a pundit who sees beyond partisanship to shine a light on any party, any politician, and bureaucrat, who acts illegally or unethically. He understands the system, and the law, and we're fortunate to be able to read his columns in the Hartford Courant.

Today, he underlines the irony of ambitious Connecticut US Attorney Kevin O'Connor pursuing a job in Bush's justice department when he spent months pursuing librarians as if they were mobsters, using the Patriot Act like it was a bludgeon.