I want to be sports editor of the Hartford Business Journal.
Besides the extraordinary writing and reportorial attention to detail, I play chess and bridge and poker — so I know my way around the sports world.
The marketing studies confirm a groundswell of Cohen-as-sports-editor fever, a Tea Party fervor among readers to give Cohen the job. And yet … and yet … here I still sit, writing columns about the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women.
What’s holding things up? Well, there’s the usual organizational sluggishness you might expect.
There is also a fear among staffers that Cohen would become even more popular and the name of the publication would be changed to the Hartford Sports Journal and there would be little space devoted to all the good news about commercial real estate in the Hartford metro market.
At the Hartford Business Journal, as in the worlds of politics and business, as in life, the status quo is often the chosen path. Change is uncertain and uncomfortable.
One solution to all this, of course, would be pure democracy. At the HBJ, for instance, let the readers vote for the new sports editor.
In the corporate world, the murky business of “corporate governance” is occasionally refurbished — competent board members are more inclined to “govern” on the shareholders’ behalf than to play another round of golf with the CEO; and “owners” are permitted to vote on their pathetic little resolutions.
In politics, in the legislative process, one way out of what is known in political science circles as “icky” situations is initiative and referendum — “pure democracy.” Voters are encouraged or, at the least, allowed to avoid legislative gridlock — and vote to do good or evil.
In Connecticut, such stuff as whether grocery stores can sell wine, or whether alcohol can be sold on Sundays, or whether Keno should be the next gambling game of choice; and whether tolls should be reinstated on Connecticut’s hideous stretch of I-95, sat around the General Assembly, while legislators hid under their desk, hoping the bills would go away, or be quietly killed.
An alternative? Put the discomforting legislation up for referendum — or let the voters figuratively march on the State Capitol, demanding an initiative process.
While referenda are common enough in some Connecticut towns, as well as in a number of states, at the state level in Connecticut, “the people” (troublemakers that they are) are not empowered to plop things on a ballot.
In a state where most legislators are guaranteed “safe” seats; in a state where labor unions and business groups and nonprofits have reasonably comfortable control over how things get done; the notion of allowing the rabble to intrude is treated with horror.
One of the national classics in recent years was the “Michigan civil rights initiative,” sneaked on the ballot in 2006. Everyone who was anyone opposed this anti-affirmative action initiative to ban racial preferences in state universities and government agencies. It wasn’t progressive, it wasn’t cool and, even worse, the voters probably supported it.
Did it pass? Of course it did, with 58 percent of the vote — a healthy majority for a piece of legislation that never would have passed through the traditional legislative process.
At a time of budget angst, where Connecticut state government and its pals must be whacked a bit, there would be little interest in allowing real democracy to run amok. Too many political friends to defend; too many unions to protect.
But, in more benign times, Connecticut should ponder the initiative and referendum process. In the meantime, just for practice, vote for Cohen as sports editor.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
