Tuesday, August 5, 2008

No Geniuses at the Capitol

Once upon a time in 1878, when the state capitol building in Hartford was constructed, the dome was adorned with a huge statue known as "The Genius of Connecticut." It stood, keeping vigil over the land for sixty years, until the Hurricane of 1938 blew through, damaging it, and creating a risk that it would topple from the dome.

It was removed, and then melted down for use in the war effort in WWII. Since then, it can be said to be poetic justice that while there has been no genius on the top of the capitol, there has certainly been no genius running the show inside of the capitol.

There was a movement in recent years to recreate the Genius statue. Considering the General Assembly's large contingent of ineffective, bumbling majority Democrats, it would probably be more fitting to have a statue called "The Retard of Connecticut" on top of the building. But no one wants to look at that. Especially since they already have a disgusting statue of Ella Grasso on the side of the building.

But alas, the news is that the "Genius" will not go up again... at least for now. While the state has spent $300,000 to build the new statue, Governor Rell is holding off spending the additional $360,000.

House Speaker Jim Amann had the temerity to weigh in with a remark that the state has other spending priorities. I agree with that, but it's tough to swallow his pretending to care about spending another $360,000 on a statue when he has no problem spending $65,000 of our money just for an hour session of the legislature.

I am in favor of placing the genius back on the dome. It would be nice to be able to say we have at least one up there.

1 comment:

mccommas said...

This story was planted to fool the gullible into thinking that our representatives occasionally put the brakes on their spending.

This money relative to what they blow every single day without so much as a fluttering eye lash is akin to what most of us have in our sofa cushions.

Chump Change.