Impressed with former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman? I never thought I'd answer that question affirmatively.

 

But after listening to her speak last night in front of the World Affairs Council Executive Forum Event at the Hartford Club on Prospect Street in Hartford, I understood that while we disagreed on so many levels, we agreed on some basic precepts. Common ground is important to have to move forward.

 

Whitman is a socially liberal Republican who headed the Environmental Protection Agency from 2001 to 2003 under George W. Bush. In response to a question about cabinet level ministers having too much power, she suggested that some agencies, like the EPA, needed to become a Cabinet-level post.

 

This question has been floating around since Nixon created the EPA in 1970, and after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, it gained traction, but failed to go anywhere under Bush I. With the BP mess in Louisiana, it makes sense to bring it up again.

 

This wasn't the only place I agreed with Whitman. She resigned from the Bush Administration because she could not defend Cheney's thrust to ease air pollution laws which violated the Clean Air Act (first passed by a Republican - Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1955).

 

Nothing so progressive could have come out of the Bush White House, and indeed, it is unlikely we will see anything so progressive from the Obama administration. Oddly enough, again in 1972, Nixon appeased the tree huggers by signing the Clean Water Act.

 

Attorney Peter Kelly, founder of Hartford law firm Updike, Kelley & Spellacy, and the powerhouse lobbying firm Black Manafort, sounded a question to Whitman about the demise of collegiality within the political world. The Republicans have no moderates, he said.

 

Whitman agreed. She told the small crowd about how when she was thinking of running for governor again in 1997, there was a chance that she could run for U.S. Senate instead. Whitman visited DC to explore the option. She ditched the idea after meeting with members of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, who told her "mention a word about campaign finance reform, and you'll never get a dime from us."

 

The extremism in politics creates a divide that prevents anything from happening, Whitman said. I agree, and I'll add that the categorization of views as extreme or moderate is a shifting sand that inhibits the dialogue.

 

Christine Todd Whitman in Hartford...

 

Okay, life has been a little packed with finishing law school and studying for the bar, but I have to follow up on the previous post about rJo Winch.

 

Kevin Brookman over at Wethepeople picked it up, and subsequently discussed multiple other campaigns (1, 2) that do not know how to use a dictionary, or stretch the truth like Dick Blumenthal. Brookman noted that rJo's misspelling pales in comparison to Blumenthal's military service exaggerations.

 

Some anonymous ranter sent me an e-mail telling me I was big-headed and egotistical for critiquing rJo on this. I dismiss this because it is from an anonymous person. But lo and behold, when I opened my e-mail last Friday afternoon, I found this from rJo herself:

Thanks for saying you will never vote for me. Isn't America wonderful? This represents the voice of a person who shares the democracy that I spent 23+ years of my life defending while serving in the United States Air Force or various assignments. Thank you for participating in our democratic system. Your comments also confirm that this is a country that is for the people, of the people and by the people. There is hope for a better tomorrow.

At first blush, rJo and I agree seem to agree on basic tenets of this American representative democracy - the need for gratitude, the right to free speech, and the right to vote.

 

While I am not sure what her "various assignments" were, (did she serve in another branch?), I am concerned about the subtext of rJo's e-mail: that military service elevates her opinion, and lessens mine to the point . Perhaps this is why Blumenthal felt the need to lie about his military service.

 

By coupling my critique of her ambition with reference to her ilitary service, rJo forces the reader to take my opinon in context of military service. Her time served protecting the Constitution makes her more of a citizen than myself, and she is more worthy of free speech than myself.

 

In an imperialitic, hierarchical society like that in the United States, members of the military can hold themselves above reproach. Americans defer to persons in uniform because that cloth allegedly represents the currency of liberty. This is why people get so angry about Blumenthal and his stolen valor, because military service is sacrosanct.

 

Link: rJo help us stop the wars...

 

Casting a stone from a glass house here (Rick Green said I had typos in yesterday's post, but I am not sure where), but I expect more from candidates for state representative.

 

I've never been much of an rJo fan, and her ill-advised run for state rep makes me ill.

 

Beyond that, if she got my e-mail address from email I sent her as a constituent, this is a Bysiewicz moment here. If she tried to contact me from my website, it is marked that way.

 

And I don't think my e-mail address has been published in the Hartford News in some time, although it used to be there regularly. Maybe she is that smart. But with staff and volunteers who can't use spell check, or even know how to spell the office she is running for, well, then. We need more out of self government.

 

Link: rJo go away...

 

In trying to convince himself of the narcissistic myth that the grass is greener in Illinois, outgoing UConn President Michael Hogan wrote the UConn community a perfunctory e-mail Wednesday morning, May 12 informing us that he is leaving us.

 

Boo hoo. I feel an academic duty to deconstruct and translate:

Hogan: I write to you today to let you know that I’ve decided to accept an appointment as president of the University of Illinois. My resignation will become effective June 30 and I’ll assume my new position in Illinois in July.

Translation: Later swamp yankees. Hogan has gotten a promotion, as the University of Illinois is an institution twice or more the size of UConn. The land of Lincoln may be one of the few places in America more corrupt than Husky Nation. Hogan will fit in perfectly there.

 

Hogan sent out this comminque at 9:42 a.m., Wednesday, May 12. Too bad that many of us learned of his resignation Tuesday night from online news reports.

 

In fact, word of Hogan’s departure took many Nutmeggers by surprise, including Governor M. Jodi Rell, according to some news reports.

 

Had Hogan broken the news to the UConn community yesterday afternoon, his words might have sounded sincere. But now, his hollow note is damage control.

Hogan: This was a very unexpected development in my life, and was not an easy decision to make.

Translation: the BS meter goes a little crazy here. Not sure if the University of Illinois recruited him or he reached out to them.

 

But he has known about this for some time. Given his “move on” job history, perhaps he has been dreaming of leaving since the minute he stepped on campus.

 

He had to apply to Illinois secretly because he had to pretend he liked it here to keep the peace. If he said he was job-hunting, the legislature would never have approved the cash for the hospital.

 

Link: Translating UConn President Michael Hogan

Editor's Note: I couldn't write a real column this week because I had my last law school exam! (It's all done but for a paper and that little test called the bar exam). The following story was first published in Dockwalk back in December 2009. I am told that I should write more humor. It may not be a bad idea considering the current state of the world...Enjoy.KK

 

Waking for midnight watch was a challenge when I was a deckie on a 150-foot stinkpot, but even more difficult for me was staying quiet when the live-aboard owner opened his mouth.

 

All sorts of drivel emanated from privileged lips of Mr. Shady Owner Man, and it was all I could do to zip my lips. But it's amazing how a paycheck and the promise of passport stamps hush a tongue.

 

I didn't sign up to for Mr. Boss to be on board some 80 out of 150 days for the delivery from Fort Lauderdale to Thailand (110 days of which were spent underway). But that's what we got. And I learned to deal with it.

 

Captain Bill first trained me to shut my trap a few years earlier on a 120-foot ketch. One Saturday during a yard period, Captain Bill gave me a last assignment at 5 p.m. I thought I was Jon Stewart fending off Tucker Carlson when I responded "I'm not your monkey boy." Captain Bill has called me "Monkey boy" ever since, even gifting me a specially-embroidered "Monkey Boy" shirt and hat for my birthday once.

 

The captain's good sense of humor disappeared with Mr. Liveaboard, especially when he brought his son to Fort Lauderdale to help finish the refit. Teaching the soft-handed teenager to scrape barnacles off the bottom of the crew tender wasn't easy. I made it thankless when I told the boy that I disagreed with the Iraq invasion, and had been jailed for civil disobedience protests.

 

"Are you stupid?" Captain Bill asked me (but not so nicely – this is, after all, a family website). At that point, I feared for my job. So I invoked my right to silence when the owner or his family entered my workspace, be it in the bridge or on the sun deck.

 

The fishing platform provided the most face time with Mr. Old-Man-And-The-Sea, and he always wanted to chat. Once, cruising for barracuda in The Bahamas, I listened to him degrade fat Americans who drive SUVs, hoping out loud that the price of gas hits $5 a gallon so chunky Americans will be forced out of their cars.

 

Considering that Mr. Limousine Liberal's yacht used some 40,000 gallons of diesel to cross the waters of the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Red and Indian seas, I comforted myself by repeating silently the famous Miranda warning: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you."

 

A bigger test awaited in the middle of the Med when Mr. Show-Off's know-it-all friend yanked the rod and reel out of my hand as I was about to set the hook. "Don't you know what you're doing?" the know-it-all said as he lost our first hit from a big-game fish in 2,500 miles. Everyone was grumpy afterwards. But I smiled, because I didn't respond with a big "Kiss my ass."

 

Come 2 a.m. that night, 100 miles from Malta, the Med kicked up its mistrals. We pounded headlong into heavy waves, Mr. Land Legs wobbily made his way into the bridge. He looked green. His wife, Mrs. I-take-Dramamine-for-a-sea-trail-in-Florida's-Intercoastal-Waterway, must have been ghastly. Woe to our poor stewardess who had to clean their head!

 

Mr. Sea-Sick-Owner-Who-Thinks-It's-Romantic-To-Do-Deliveries, grabbing onto the balance bar on the instrument panel, glanced at my watch partner, the engineer, and then me, and pleaded "Can't you make it stop?"

 

"Of course," I wish I replied. "The Wave Regulator! Why didn't I think of that? Silly me. I am so sorry we inconvenienced you. I turn the waves down now." But I could never understand why he took his Mrs. when she was obviously not a sailor.

 

Jump: Deckies Should Be Seen and Not Heard

A man named Brian has a good life – a wife, a newborn baby – then he learns he has brain cancer. The treatments exhaust his health insurance, leaving him without coverage for the recovery.

His friends band together and raise money so he can receive the appropriate care.

This happens across the United States every day. Is this a smaller part of the social movement towards a national healthcare/Medicare for All government run health insurance? Or is this just a fundraiser?

It is real. "Benefit for Brian" will be an all-day concert in Simsbury on Sunday, May 2, 2010 to help defray the medical expenses associated with Brian's battle with brain cancer.

I don't know who Brian is, but the flyer I found advertising the fundraiser said: "Brian was diagnosed with brain cancer after undergoing two surgeries to remove a large tumor from his brain, and he is going to require a long and expensive recovery."

Local rock musicians like Flipper Dave, Shortness, the Dr. Juice Trio and Matt Zeiner will perform at the Old Well, a restaurant at 20 Tariffville Road in Simsbury from 2 to 10 p.m. There will be food and a raffle to help raise money.

If the community rallying around Brian isn’t heartwarming enough, the picture of Brian holding his newborn infant on the flyer will grab your heart and make you want to go. But I found this flyer interesting from a social movement perspective.

Is the "Benefit for Brian," and the dozens of other similar fundraisers held across the country every day to help fellow citizens pay for outrageous medical costs an indication of a nascent parallel polis, the signature steps in a social movement that will eventually overcome the dominant health care structure?

A social movement begins with contemporaneous personal and collective identification with the consequences of the control exercised by the elite, and that this is a wrong being perpetrated on undeserving people, according to author Edward L. Rubin in "Passing Through the Door: Social Movement Literature and Legal Scholarship," as published in 150 University of Pennsylvania Law Review, page 1.

 

More Parallel Polis: Benefit for Brian as a Social Movement

Columnist's Note: After writing a few pieces for The 40-Year Plan in the fall of 2009 while an inmate at Hartford County Correctional Facility, our prison correspondent Joe Santana was transferred to Garner Correctional Institute in Newtown.

I do not mean to insinuate that there was a cause and effect between his journalistic pursuits and the transfer, because despite being a higher security prison, the services at Garner are much better. Joe and I talk often, and while he writes regularly, this is the first piece he has sent in a while.

When we printed one of his columns last fall, a loyal reader sent Joe a letter encouraging him to write more, as he clearly has a talent for it. I deeply appreciate the community reaching out to Joe.

Joe loved the letter, and he has taken the advice to heart. He told me proudly that the inmate newspaper was publishing a letter he wrote to his father, who is seriously ill in Puerto Rico. Because of the time Joe is looking at, he may not see his dad before his father dies. I hope this is not the case, as Joe has already missed the funeral of a grandparent due to his incarceration. It must hurt more than I want to imagine.

Once Joe read me the letter, I felt our audience needed to see it, too.

If you are interested in writing to our prison correspondent, Joe loves getting mail: Joe Santana, inmate number 306658, Garner Correctional Facility, 50 Nunnawauk, Newtown, Connecticut 06470.

Thanks again, and keep those cards and letters coming.

Peace, KK

Dear Pops,

 

What's up, man? How have you been? I haven't seen you in ages. I hear from you all the time, but it's not the same, like in person. The last time I really saw you I was in my early teenage years.

 

The day you announced your withdrawal from Connecticut to live in Puerto Rico, I brushed it off by smoking and drinking all night. It was that night and nights to come that I slowly discovered who you were and who you are.

 

Dad, when I was younger, your absence was replaced by mom's mentioning of how I’m the spitting image of you. Although it was never mentioned when I was in my Sunday best because she took credit for that.

 

More of Letters from Inside the Belly: Letter to my Papi

When a millionaire college basketball coach tells you "Not a dime back," he means it.

 

At least that's the picture that emerges from a months-long investigation into the 2008 calendar year recruiting expenses of two perennial men's college basketball powerhouses, the University of Connecticut and the University of North Carolina.

 

Wealthy basketball coaches and their well-paid assistants at public universities like UNC and UConn enjoy perks like free meals and limo rides, but the full picture of dollars spent on recruiting top talent across the world is muddied because of poor compliance and outright obfuscation or ignoring requests for information.

 

Identical Freedom of Information Act requests sent to the two public universities for the travel expenses and reimbursements for the year 2008 for coaches certified as recruiters by the NCAA by the did not generate the same data set.

 

Thus, the full story of every penny spent by the two public universities in securing commitments from players for the 2009 season and beyond is untold. From what documents The 40-Year Plan did receive, we created a spreadsheet detailing the expenses and their categories (with special thanks to researcher Catherine Moriarty).

 

The UConn men's coaching staff spent at least $220,565.71 ($142,877.11 in flights alone), and likely much more, in 2008 recruiting players. A .PDF of the expense forms from UConn is here.

 

Although on the budget forms UConn submitted to the NCAA and the Federal Department of Education, the Huskies claim $247,404 in recruiting expenses for basketball. Comparatively, the UConn women's basketball team spent $108,594 recruiting in 2008.

 

The UNC coaching staff spent at minimum $68,358.11. About half of that is accounted for in receipts, the remainder is identified on travel reimbursement forms but no receipts are provided. Much more seems unaccounted for because UNC failed to turn over its credit card records where many of the expenses seem to be.

 

Considering that UNC won the national championship in 2009, and UConn made it to the Final Four that same year, it is hard to fathom that competing programs like UNC and UConn do not spend like amounts in recruiting talent.

 

Calhoun's expenses range from huge - like $45,876.51 in flights for one year; to the medium, like a $1,186 limousine ride from Hartford to Jersey City, New Jersey; to the small, like a $165.81 dinner at his house in Pomfret for a recruit; to the puny, like $3.10 for what appears to be the commute from his home to the Storrs campus.

 

UNC coach Roy Williams actually reimbursed UNC for a $130 limo ride, but North Carolina's $1.5 million a year man submitted receipts seeking a $2 reimbursement for newspapers. When Williams enjoys the use of a dealer car on occassion, he won't charge the UNC for mileage.

 

Williams has a similar range of expenses as Calhoun, although Williams does not log as much in flight costs because donors grant him the use of a private jet, which UNC refused to reveal information about. UNC also gave the Federal Department of Education far less info than UConn.

 

Williams also lost the receipts for multiple meal expenses, and handwrote the costs, indicating that no alcohol was consumed at the meal, according to UNC reimbursement rules.

 

UNC and UConn Basketball recruiting costs...jump

Pension funds, the massive trove of public money earmarked to provide a secure retirement for government workers, can always be counted on to stir up controversy.

 

MDC chairman Bill DiBella recently paid almost $800,000 in fines to the federal Securities and Exchange Commission because of kickbacks he received from former state treasurer Paul Silvester's investment of pension monies in certain market funds.

 

The city of Fairfield, Connecticut lost almost $42 million because it invested with ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff back in December 2008.

 

Then there's Oz Griebel, a Republican candidate for governor in Connecticut, who is preaching that public employees need to downgrade their expectations of fully-funded pension plans and accept market-driven 401k retirement plans like everyone else.

 

Back on March 2004, I wrote a column about pension funds called "Dump Stocks, Invest Locally." For me, the concept of putting city pension funds in a stock market which profits off the destruction of urban areas seemed counterintuitive and indeed, counterproductive.

 

And six years later, I think we need to revisit the concept of investing pension funds in local business opportunities.

 

In March 2004, Hartford City Treasurer Kathleen Palm Devine and I spoke about using pension funds as a community economic development engine in what are called economically targeted investments.

 

At that time, she told me pension funds are not for rebuilding Hartford. Palm detailed her own 40 year plan for securing the pension fund, and land was not among the six classes of assets she targeted for investment because land is illiquid.

 

Yet in 2004, Palm was getting some press because she was considering using city pension funds to finance the construction of residential brownstones on the empty parking lots between Buckingham and Capital.

Pension Funds as an economic engine - continued...

"Varmint rifle, youth guns,” the signs at Cabela's gun rack announced when I visited there in November 2008.

 

Does that mean we can shoot the kids?

 

As we approach the end of Governor Rell's taxpayer funded vacation, it is worthwhile to examine her legacy. Gov. Wiecker gave us the income tax, Gov. Rowland gave us UConn 2000 and campuses in downtown Waterbury and Hartford, and Gov. Rell, she gave $10 million in taxpayer money to Cabela's.

 

Riding in, I saw UTC "it's too expensive to do business in Connecticut so we're moving to Turkey and Poland where can abuse the labor more" fuel cells in front. This is greenwashing at its best. They say clean, but they run on natural gas, a fossil fuel which is the most hydrogen rich fuel source around. So there are few emissions, but what about mining the gas?

 

I read that they cost $860,000, but that Cabela’s will save $60,000 a year in electricity costs. Why do the perks of the green society go to private industry? Any city government in Connecticut would be thrilled to save $60,000 a year in electrical costs. Why do policy choices automatically, almost reflexively, go to creating incentives for business, and the public sphere?

 

So, suppose that the city of Hartford purchased a few of those fuel cells with state aid, and ran its electrical costs for itself, the Wadsworth, the Hartford Public Library and the MDC off of it. No, makes too much sense.

 

This is Governor Rell's Legacy in three parts.

 

Link - Cabela's: A good subsidy, or a waste of tax money?

Ed’s Note: This is the fourth part of a four-part interview with Tom Foley, Republican candidate for Governor of Connecticut.
Part I, published the week of February 10, 2010, featured some of Foley’s ideas about voter participation, being an ambassador to Ireland, and UConn’s tuition increase.

Part II, published the week of February 17, 2010, scratched the surface of his participation as the Director of Private Sector Development for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from August 2003 through March 2004.

Part III, published the week of March 3, 2010, searched Foley’s responses to those who criticized the job he did in Iraq.

 

Tom Foley has measuring sticks for what success in Iraq will look like.

 

"If Iraq emerges as a representative government with representation of human rights, I think the goals that our government had in mind when they invaded Iraq will be achieved," he said. "People will have to decide if it was worth the cost in terms of lives and money."

 

This leads to the inevitable question: Seven years ago, in March 2003, did you support the invasion of Iraq?

 

"I wasn't a member of the government, I wasn’t in the legislature," he said. "I supported my government's foreign policy. If you are not a member of the legislature, or a member of the executive branch, you don't vote on every aspect of our government's foreign policy. I supported our government's policy."

 

But Mr. Foley, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said that the office of citizen is the highest office in a democracy. As a citizen, in March 2003, did you support the invasion of Iraq?

 

"I supported my government's foreign policy," he said.

 

The Bush Administration's foreign policy in March 2003 was the invasion of Iraq. Did you support the invasion of Iraq in March 2003?

 

"I supported my government's foreign policy," he said.

 

About a week after we had that merry-go-round of a conversation, it still bugged me. So I emailed Foley, and asked him to call me back for a few follow-ups. When he did, I asked him why the distaste for saying that you supported the invasion of Iraq?

 

"There is no distaste," Foley said. "I was just making the point that when you are a private citizen being asked if you supported it, I trust the government and support its foreign policy, but I wasn't a policy maker. To say I supported it, that is a different question if you are a policy maker."

 

Then Foley slipped back into his talking point about how history will be the ultimate judge of the invasion of Iraq. Doesn’t it bother you, then, I asked Foley, that we have spent thousands of American lives, more than a million Iraqi lives, and maybe $300 billion and we don't know the outcome?

 

Interview with Tom Foley, Part IV continued...

Ed’s Note: This is Part III of a four-part interview with Tom Foley, Republican candidate for Governor of Connecticut. Part IV of the interview with will be published on March 10, 2010.

Part I, published the week of February 10, 2010, featured some of Foley’s ideas about voter participation, being an ambassador to Ireland, and UConn’s tuition increase.

Part II, published the week of February 17, 2010, scratched the surface of his participation as the Director of Private Sector Development for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from August 2003 through March 2004.

 

Economist Peter Galbraith's critique of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq does not sit well with Connecticut Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley.

 

Foley, of course, was a high ranking official with the Coalition Provisional Authority from August 2003 through March 2004. After his stint in Iraq, he became the Nutmeg state's chair to re-elect Bush.

 

Foley's official title with the CPA was Director of Private Sector Development, and Foley disputes any contention that his job was to privatize Iraq's almost 200-state owned industries, even though his boss, L. Paul Bremer, admitted more times and places than I can fit here that the CPA sought to privatize the Iraqi economy.

 

Galbraith's book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War without End, published in 2006 by Simon & Schuster, has received minor criticism outside of Foley.

 

Michael M. Gunter reviewed Galbraith’s book for the Middle East Journal in September 2006. Gunter said despite Galbraith's overreaching title, the book was a "devastating critique of… US cronyism and ... even outright corruption."

 

"Written in a journalistic, even polemical style lacking any scholarly documentation and limited in its bibliography, Galbraith's treatise reads more like a lengthy editorial," Gunter wrote. "Nevertheless, it is a well-written, intelligent one that makes many valid and disturbing points that need to be aired."

 

Of Foley, Galbraith wrote: "Tom Foley, a top Bush fundraiser with no experience in handling economic transitions (and no knowledge of Iraq) was put in charge of privatizing Iraq's industry." (p. 126).

 

Foley's response: "He's wrong. I wasn't put in charge of privatization. My job was private sector development. My job was to begin laying the foundations for a private sector economy in Iraq. A small part of that responsibility was to put together a plan for privatizing state owned enterprises."

 

For example, Foley said that there wasn't a credit based banking system in Iraq.

 

Isn't that a reflection of Islamic culture and sharia law that frowns on charging interest on loans, I asked.

 

"It is a reflection of a dictatorship," Foley said. "Loans are extended on credit worthiness. In a dictatorship, loans are extended on how well you know the dictator. They had no ability to assess credit and rank credit and credit worthy borrowers. Saddam and his lieutenants ordered the banks to make loans."

Interview with Tom Foley, Part III continued...

 

If the President calls Connecticut in a state of emergency, Lisa Moody will answer the phone.

 

No, seriously.

 

On May 15, 2007, Connecticut state police commanding officer Colonel Thomas Davoren emailed Gov. M. Jodi Rell's chief of staff Lisa Moody: "We received an inquiry from the FEMA operations center requesting a number for 24/7 contact with the Governor in case the President needed to speak with the Governor's on short request."

 

The next afternoon, May 16, 2007, Moody wrote back: "We have always given out my cell phone as the primary contact 24/7."

 

I received this email interaction between Moody and Davoren today as part of an FOIA request I have with the Connecticut Department of Public Safety.

 

Consider, for a moment, that in the event of a Katrina-style disaster in Connecticut, the first person the President would talk is....Lisa Moody.

 

Perhaps this is an overstatement, and Davoren actually meant the Governor's office, instead of the Governor, and thus there would be a number of conversations between underlings before the President actually spoke with Governor Rell.

 

But then again, Davoren's e-mail sounds like he is describing the Bat phone. Or that classic 3 a.m. phone call that Hillary so scared us into thinking could happen. The government prepares for that 3 a.m. phone call, and in Governor Rell's administration, it looks like Lisa Moody is the person who gets it.

 

Permanent link...Lisa Moody is in Charge...

 

This is Ned Lamont's new state campaign headquarters at a storefront at 169 Orange Street, smack in the middle of downtown New Haven.

 

In 2006, Lamont's state HQ was in a Meriden office park. Any guesses as to why Ned has put his war room behind New Haven City Hall?

 

It'd be nice if the New Haven Democratic Town Committee's website told us anything. At all.

 

My guess: it has something to do with the 81 Democratic primary delegates at stake in New Haven...

 

Ned's website, facebook, twitter and flickr feeds have no mention of his new office.

 

Perhaps he is waiting for more window dressing.

 

Or approval from DeStefano.

 

Lamont's Statewide HQ

 

John Wojda portrays the male 'parentocracy' that rules over
the youth cast in "Spring Awakening," the multiple-Tony winning musical about the travails of teen desire now at the Bushnell until February 28.

 

I never cover theatre, let alone musicals. But "Spring Awakening" fits my academic landscape, and my interview with Wojda, on his 53rd birthday (February 19), was as compelling as the musical itself.

 

The original "Spring Awakening," written in 1891 by playwright Frank Wedenkind, was banned in its native Germany for decades because it was pornographic.

 

“It was so incredibly shocking and controversial, it couldn’t be performed for 26 years,” Wojda said. “The Bohemians in the German mind had gotten out of hand. This was a real crackdown on youth.”

 

If only those kids could have read German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who was born in Prague, then the capital of Bohemia in Austria-Hungary Empire, in 1875. Rilke died in 1926. Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet" seems to answer many of the questions that the young Germans in "Spring Awakening" grapple with.

 

"Spring Awakening" confronts the run of teen issues: homosexuality, incestual molestation, abuse, masturbation, suicide, and pressure to achieve academically.

 

Back in the 1890s, though, one can easily see how these topics were taboo. "The theme is about how young people are put upon, taken advantage of," Wojda said. "With this story, it goes more to the human injustice, it is criticizing its time."

 

Spring Awakening, Continued...

Ed’s Note: This is Part II of a four-part interview with Tom Foley, Republican candidate for Governor of Connecticut. After a short interlude next week in which I will write about Spring Awakenings, a musical coming to the Bushnell, I will print the third and fourth parts of the interview with Foley on March 3 and March 10, 2010.

Part I, published the week of February 10, 2010, featured some of Foley’s ideas about voter participation, being an ambassador to Ireland, and UConn’s tuition increase.

This week, Part II of the conversation heads into the other area of Foley’s past that many have expressed concern about: his participation as the Director of Private Sector Development for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from August 2003 through March 2004.

 

Much was written about Tom Foley and his task at the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. In the fog of war, you can't always tell what is true.

 

The right-leaning press lauded Foley. "Characters are the backbone of any good story, and the Americans working in Iraq are the finest I have ever met," wrote Noah D. Oppenheim in "Flacks and Hacks in Baghdad: What it's like to Report from Iraq," printed in the December 15, 2003 issue of the Weekly Standard.

 

Oppenheim praised "People like Col. Nate Slate, a man trained his entire life to fire artillery, now doing a miraculous job rebuilding the town of Taji. People like Tom Foley, a multimillionaire financier, now walking the lines at Iraqi shoe factories, helping get an economy off the ground."

 

Obviously, the left-leaning press was harder on him. The socialist People's Weekly World suggested in a November 10, 2003 story that Foley invited "14 Eastern European finance officials to Baghdad to give advice about privatization."

 

In the story titled "As Iraq Death Toll Rises, So Do War Profits," writer Tim Wheeler, quoting the Moscow News, wrote that Foley met in Iraq with Yegor Gaidar, the acting Prime Minister of Russia for much of 1992.

 

Gaidar, a widely respected and criticized politician and economist, laid the foundation for the mass privatization of Russia’s planned Soviet economy. While Gaider averted a civil war, there was also much suffering during this transition to a "free market" system.

 

Foley has no recollection of the meeting with either Yegor Gaidar or the former Soviet Bloc officials.

Interview with Tom Foley, Part II continued...

 

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley spent 42 minutes on the phone this morning with me answering questions about voter turnout, the role of a U.S. Ambassador, UConn tuition increases and Abu Ghraib.

 

I have split the interview into two, possibly three segments, and will focus this first segment on state issues, and his time in Ireland as U.S. Ambassador to Ireland.

 

The second (and perhaps third) portions will discuss his seven-month stint (August 2003-March 2004) as the Director of Private Development for the Coalition Provision Authority in Iraq.

 

With Governor M. Jodi Rell retiring, at least a dozen candidates have either intimated or outright declared their candidacies for governor. Since the 40-Year Plan has been keeping track, here is the list (in ABC order).

 

Democrats: Former Speaker of the House Jim Amann, Hartford health care activist Juan Figueroa, Simsbury First Selectwoman Mary Glassman, 2006 Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate Ned Lamont, former Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy and Ridgefield First Selectman Rudy Marconi. Drop-outs: Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz and State Senator Gary LeBeau (East Hartford).

 

Republicans: Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton, former Congressman Larry DeNardis (New Haven), Lt. Governor Michael Fedele, former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland and member of the Coalition Provisional Authority Thomas Foley, Hartford cheerleader Oz Griebel, Chester First Selectman Tom Marsh, and Newington Mayor Jeff Wright. Drop-outs: None (yet).

 

"It's an open seat," Foley said. "Open seats always attract more candidates on both sides."

Interview with Tom Foley, continued...