Monday, June 18, 2007

Suzy? Suzy Creamcheese? From B to Z in Middletown.


Separated at birth? Nah.

So Middletown Councilman Dave Bauer is a Frank Zappa fan. I don't know why that surprises me, but I look at grown men and women in my age range and I forget that they listened to the same radio as I did.

Dave likes Zappa and Hendrix, and he likes to stick the needle in the overinflated status quo. Dave invited me to stop by his WESU talk show (he featured Dog Breath from the Mothers of Invention this afternoon), and I spent a few minutes listening to his amazing grasp of facts connecting Connecticut state contractors with State contracts, and the elected officials in charge of distributing the money for those contracts. Dave wonders, rightfully so, why no one from the state media is interested in these easy-to-uncover facts while they hammer Lou Deluca, and rightfully so, for his acceptance of chump change campaign donations from a connected trash hauler. Good question.

I find, again to my surprise, that Dave and I have more in common than I previously thought. At the local level, political affiliations often fly in the face of party logic. I find myself siding often with the minority Republicans in town. Bauer is one of those Republicans.

He told me that before he was elected to the council, he presented a resolution to the council to have the City of Middletown reject the precepts of the Patriot Act. Many councils across the country accepted and passed such resolutions. It would have been wise and wonderful if our council had taken Bauer up on his proposal. They didn't. But my respect for Dave has grown each time he's stood up to the Democratic majority.

I suspect that there's a lot Dave and I won't agree about, but we're going to have some interesting conversations.

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