It's just a state job

More than a few of us were shaken into awareness when CT House Speaker Chris Donovan offered former house speaker Jim Amann an advisor's job for $120k.

As we know, Amann thought better of accepting the job.

But it got a lot of people wondering. Do legislative staff really pull down that kind of dough?

I guess the answer is, "Hell, yes."

Colin McEnroe points us to this list, of salaries in the Democratic and Republican caucuses. State salaries paid by you and me.

The next logical question: Does a part-time legislature (and let's not kid ourselves, most legislators are full-time politicians), need a full-time staff of this size? And why do most of the staff make more than the legislators who hire them?

And why aren't any of this staff positions on the line when the state is so far in the hole?

The press release we'd all love to read

It goes something like, "We love you Joe, get lost."

If only our lawmakers had the balls and the backbones to write it.

We sing of Iowa

How did I ever get to 55 without understanding what the Iowa caucuses are, and how they work, and then to realize, that I'm not exactly sure, at this moment still, how they work.

I owe it (homonym not intended) to the 24/7 media for hammering away at Iowa for the past three months to make me even wonder what the hell a caucus (Iowa style) is. First of all the Democratic and Republican caucuses are different. The Republicans use a confidential vote. The Democrats, well, here's an explanation.

Some would, and have, called the disdain for the Iowa process, "East coast intellectual media bashing,"

Until this point, I just accepted the Iowa results on faith. Just the same kind of faith I show each time I walk into an elevator and expect it to work without fail. Now, I find myself thinking of Iowa a little too often, and while I would hope my point of reference for those thoughts would be Greg Brown, Dave Moore or the Creative Writing Program at UI, it's more about Hillary and Obama, as I hum: