Corruption occurs in politics when no one is watching and
God sleeps. In a nation in which the Christian God is mercilessly being exiled
from the public square, what John Adams and other founders of the Republic
called “virtue” does not rule in the hearts of men and women. Private interest
is king.
“Our Constitution,” Adams said, “was made only for a moral
and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any
other. It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds
of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their
industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness,
abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every
capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in
infancy, they will grovel all their lives.”
The founders were not on good terms with groveling. It is
doubtful in our day, when the separation of church and state has become a
Berlin Wall, that Adams would have been able to find a post in any of our
public schools. He would not have been mustered in to pedagogical service by
former U.S. Senator and Governor Lowell Weicker, whose operative belief was
that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provided a right of
freedom from religion. In fact, the Constitution
provides a right of freedom of religion; prepositions
are important, here as elsewhere, in interpreting texts.
In a secular culture overseen by what Jacques Maritain
called “practical atheists,” and what we have come to call “cultural Christians
and Jews,” Christian and Jewish virtue must take a backseat to practical
morality, and the practical morality of politicians is not, most of us realize
through painful observation, invariably practical or moral. Perhaps more
important, the ethics approved by political commissions designed by designing
politicians do not always concur with the practical ethics of the community
both politicians and such commissions are sworn to represent. On occasion, the
opposite is true. Sometimes – one hopes rarely – a narrow political
constituency is less moral than representative politicians. How else to explain
the reelection to office in Bridgeport of former felons, such as the present
Mayor, the Honorable Joe Ganim?
Actually, the reelection to office of Ganim, who spent seven
years in the clinker repenting his felonious activity, is easily explained.
There is and has been no effective opposition party representation in
Bridgeport for the last thirty years. The longest serving Mayor of Bridgeport
was the Honorable Jasper McLevy (1933-1957), a socialist.
Connecticut is now a one party state, somewhat like
Bridgeport – meaning, the Republican Party, as an operational entity, barely
exists at all. The Governor’s Office, all the state’s Constitutional offices,
all the members of Connecticut’s U.S. Constitutional Delegation, and
gatekeepers in the General Assembly, effectively shut down during the
Coronavirus plague, are all Democrat led.
In an era in which Adams’ “virtue” lingers as a ghostly
presence in Connecticut, there is little robust contrarian opposition, and very
few journalistic watchdogs unconnected to the reigning power, capable of arousing
the uncorrupted virtues of a protesting public. Political interests, as we all
know, should never be confused with public duties. Some politically connected
watchdog groups exist only to keep the lid tightly closed on a political
Pandora’s Box of corruption.
Asking the question qui bono – who
benefits? – lifts the lid on corruption a bit, but never enough to expose the
special interests swarming inside. An Inspector General’s office,
free of political entanglements and armed with subpoena powers, authorized
to act against public agencies on complaints from citizens, would tear the lid
open and allow disinfecting sunlight to rout the smelly little secrets of the
politically privileged. Clever politicians have had a good deal of practice in
using ersatz watchdogs to sit – sometimes for years – on the lids of the box.
Courant commentator Kevin Rennie, a former Republican state
senator and representative, is responsible for first noting that the state of
Connecticut – i.e. Governor Ned Lamont, who had been adorned with plenary
powers by a timorous Democrat controlled General Assembly -- had “awarded a
contract to a company (Sema4) where Gov. Ned Lamont’s wife’s venture capital
firm was invested. The contract was awarded despite warnings from The Office of
State Ethics that contracts between Annie Lamont’s firm or any associated
companies and the state of Connecticut could present a conflict of interest.”
Those words were written by Bob Stefanowski,
who many expect will be the Republican Party nominee for Governor.
So the cat, to mix metaphors, is out of the Pandora’s Box.
But it took Rennie two years, Stefanowski reminds us, to wrest
through the Freedom of Information Commission what should have been public
information from the Lamonts. “King Ned”, as some in the loyal opposition have
styled him, has been a plenary force for
two years. The governor has asserted his family has made no profit from the
deal and that, if in the future Sema4 should
enrich the Lamonts, he will turn over any profits to charity.
Comments
https://www.facebook.com/7815396/posts/10106549962948619/?d=n
I hope the link I am sharing works ! Thank you for your time,
Cheryl ( Litchfield CT)