How many Connecticut Democratic legislators does it take to change a light bulb? Four.
One to monitor the project for prevailing-wage labor violations; one to threaten the contractor with a mysterious budget cut if his company is nonunion; one to insist that a police officer be assigned on overtime to monitor corridor traffic around the light bulb project; and one to organize a task force to recommend that in the future, light bulb projects be performed by 18-person state employee teams represented by four different unions, rather than an outside vendor employing one dangerously overworked light bulb changer.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. That’s a Jodi Rell joke. When she gets together over cigars and cognac with the lobbyists and fat-cat contributors, Gov. M. Jodi Rell is a comic genius.
That’s why it was no surprise when Jodi sent off a sort-of-official April 1st letter to Atty. Gen. Richard Blumenthal, requesting that he investigate why the University of Tennessee women’s basketball team is no longer interested in scheduling games against the University of Connecticut.
The Jodi & Dick Show
She called Tennessee’s coach “scowl-faced,” an adjective normally reserved for newspaper publishers. The governor asked Blumenthal, who has been known to investigate why the chicken crossed the road, to utilize all the resources at his disposal to get to the bottom of the basketball scandal.
I told you. Jodi is a hoot.
The only person in state government almost as funny as Jodi Rell is Dick Blumenthal. This guy could do vaudeville. You’ve seen him at those press conferences, tossing off jokes about ATM bank fees and how many Microsoft executives it takes to create a restraint of trade conspiracy. Oh, stop it. Blumenthal is a hoot.
He’s a little shy and doesn’t like to be in front of a microphone, but give him an amusing gubernatorial request for an investigation — and this guy is the King of Legal Comedy.
Here is his response to Gov. Rell’s inquiry about the University of Tennessee crybabies.
Don’t read this while you’re eating oatmeal or something; if you laugh and choke, I don’t want to be blamed as the proximate cause of your negligence.
Tennessee Scandal
“Gov. Rell, as I’m sure you are aware, we have been monitoring the restraint-of-trade implications of the University of Tennessee boycott for some time, given the discriminatory principle that any new team is engaged in the first place at a remuneration that is equal to its cost, although the other pre-existing teams may in addition be enjoying various levels of profiteering, like Big Oil and Big Pharma, and other Big Stuff, while threatening the lobster population of Long Island Sound.
“The legal question to be addressed is, as Chief Justice Marshall noted in McColloch v. Madison, ‘should we suppose that the people of any one State should be willing to trust those of another with a power to control the operations of something as valuable as a basketball rivalry and subsequent T-shirt and TV rights?’
Upon review, we believe that the High Court language in Nebbia v. New York, noting that ‘neither property rights nor contract rights are absolute; for government cannot exist if a scowl-faced University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach may at will use her property to the detriment of others,’ empowers us (by which I mean, me) to reluctantly hold a press conference, with national feed to CNN; write an opinion piece for several major national and regional newspapers; sit-down with Larry King Live, and schedule 30-minute phone interviews with 50,000-watt radio stations to express my outrage and intention to litigate.
“Thank you for your interest.”
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
