Caution: Connecticut lawmakers at “work”
State lawmakers in Democrat-dominated Connecticut raised income taxes on the wealthy and borrowed more than $1 billion to balance their budget this week.
While a minority Republican legislator spoke on the floor late into the night yesterday, what were his Democrat colleagues doing?
Playing solitaire on their computers:
And watching baseball over the Internet:
Yes, the photo is real.
***
Commenter Chapoutier identifies the Democrat slackers: “Using a little detective work and a seating chart, the woman is [State Democrat Rep. Barbara] Lambert. That would make the person to her left [State Democrat Rep. Jack] Hennessy, and the unshown person two rows behind watching baseball likely [State Democrat Rep. Russ] Morin.
Hennessy is the Assistant Majority Leader of the Connecticut legislature.
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It reminds me of law school.
People should know by now that electing democrats means high taxes and a lack of seriousness about their jobs or concern for their constituents. Keep on electing them.
It is so refreshing to see Politicians using the tax payer dollar so wisely.
It’s a great photo BTW.
At least they are not playing “minesweeper” or “Halo”.
Great Snapshots of politicians at the “hard work” for thier constituents!
Dock their pay. These people work for us, right? Hello, is this thing on?
Well, at least not that we’re able to notice. Skill level to play these is probably beyond their pay grade.
They love your money and lording over you.
Using a little detective work and a seating chart, the woman is Lambert. That would make the person to her left Hennessy, and the unshown person two rows behind watching baseball likely Ayala.
Good work. Thanks.
Very good. May all our elected officials do such AND NOT HELP MAKE THINGS BETTER as we can not afford any more MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE.
And just what is wrong with “minesweeper”?
liberals have certainly outlived their usefulness. liberals don’t have the capacity to accomplish anything of note.
This explains half the legislation for this entire country.
Nope, you can’t cut and paste the entire article, however it would be more honest not only to mention tax increases, but to also mention the tax cuts.
- cut estate taxes for the wealthy
- reduce the sales tax for everyone
As for the computer stuff, it used to be newspapers and magazines. I recall a story about a legislator signing 8×10 glossies of himself during a committee hearing. I suppose it is called multi-tasking.
And, yes I am guilty of having doodled at office meetings.
Much ado about nothing.
Doodle at my meting and your fired.
Obama regime to bail out British Booze company with $2.7 Billion in taxpayer dollars/Chinese debt. Playing solitaire is harmless compared to what they do when they’re ‘working.’
I suppose we should be glad they weren’t looking at porn sites, instead.
MM, I screwed up. Change Ayala (district 128) to “Morin” (District 28) Here is the seating chart.
It could also be Miller, but I though more likey a guy watching baseball.
My point exactly. Doodling only impacts you and your ability to get the job done. What legislators do and don’t do impacts their constiuents and their livelihoods. Much ado about nothing, my foot.
Not to quibble, (well, all right, to quibble a little bit) but Hennessy is to her right, and the guy watching baseball would seem to be Genga, not Ayala, who isn’t even in that section.
Geez, Windows solitaire?! For crying out loud, can’t these bozos get a good lan game of “Left 4 Dead” running?
Regardless whether this is a time-honored tradition or not in long meetings and legislative sessions, if I were a legislator I would think I might have more sense than to do this crap when there are cameras over my shoulder and this little thing called the internet that can broadcast what I’m up to in seconds.
But, after all, elections are popularity contests, not really opportunities to select the best people. (See current occupant of 1600 Pensylvania Ave.)
Already addressed Ayala. That was due to a typo on my part. Genga is only one row behind them on the chart. The baseball watcher is two rows. You can see the extra (empty) row gap. Plus Genga looks to be about 90. He probably wouldn’t know how to turn a computer on, let alone get streaming baseball.
Oh, ok, didn’t see your post while I was “researching”. Anyway, the guy watching baseball looks to be in the next row back, not two back and almost directly behind her, which would make it Genga.
In the immortal words of Homer Simpson…
We seem to be crossing each other here.
see how those mikes behind her are at a different level than the computer? Those are on the same level of empty chairs. I think the stadium seating and the camera perspective are throwing you off.
They have assigned seats? I think they should have to fight for them, and there’s not enough seats for everyone. That might help them occupy their time.
I’m not saying they’re stupid, but they shouldn’t be yelling out “Bingo” when they win at Windows Solitaire! Just saying is all.
Lawmakers would be too stupid to figure out that minesweeper is basically math. They’re not too good at math, especially when it comes to budgets.
Let’s see…in the private sector, an employee who is on the time clock, but is using business equipment for personal use is usually fired. It is a form of theft.
Why do they not have the games removed from the “business” computers before they are hooked up for congressional use? (It can’t be a matter of cost…that has never bothered Democrats before!)
We already knew some, if not most, of the elected/appointed Democrats were thieves, not we have proof that at least one very liberal state condones it.
Of course the “corrective actions” that will be taken, is that cameras will no longer be allowed, or they won’t be allowed to capture images from behind the politicians…It’s the cameras fault, don’tcha know?
Up or Out?
OUT!
I hate Windows Solitare. it does not allow you to cheat.
But upon reflection, maybe that’s a good learning tool for these legislatures. Maybe it will convince them its pointless to attempt to cheat?
Oh man, am I delusional……
A fair point.
So, was the result a net tax increase, or a net tax decrease?
Does anyone here for a moment believe that the smoke-and-mirrors process run by a socialist-dominated legislature would not have the net result of higher taxes?
Gee, here’s the answer:
As for:
Did the decisions taken at those meetings affect the pocketbooks and lives of many, many other citizens?
“Affect” in the sense of ultimately empowering people with guns to forcibly take other peoples’ money and assets, and to arrest them?
Ahem. The point is that we all could get in trouble at our work if we did such things.
Next couple of things that come to my mind is: they don’t consider it ‘work’, and they certainly don’t take that job as seriously as they should.
Also, do they do this when a democrat speaks? Yes? Is this why none of them understand the healthcare bill?
anyone seen ‘District 9′ yet? Rogue?
Genga looks to maybe be in his 50’s, and probably no older since he’s a back-bencher. In any event, given the position of the microphone table in the seating arrangement, if it were two rows back it wouldn’t be Morin – maybe Miller (145). But I think you’re mistaking the microphone stand between seats as another row. I know this is quibbling, but we’re naming actual people here, and it’s only fair to be accurate even if they are Democrats.
If they fired people for that, half the people on this board would be out of work.
Saw District 9 a couple of weekends ago.
The subject matter was cool, but the way it was filmed is not exactly pleasing. Also, as a science fiction ‘critic,’ there were things that didn’t make sense to me, and things must make sense. I can’t stand watching a movie who’s sole attribute is special effects and CG. This was a little better than that alone, but there were still serious flaws with things that would be different.
(Yes, I know it is science fiction. Still the story must make sense within itself. If a ‘creature’ is imbued with certain abilities, the action should not ignore them or change them to suit the writer’s inability to craft a better line of action.)
No. I agree it is important. And actually looking at it again, I am not so sure…
Nope. There are a backpieces and sidepieces on the desks. If you look closely, you’ll see that the sidepieces on the mike desk and the computer desk are adjacent. Once again, I know I’m quibbling, but we’re using real names here.
Yeah. We are crossing posts. I think you are right.
Gee…I bet the Dems in Wash. have similar stuff going on. You know, what with having all that free time that they are not using to read bills and such. Probably one mean game of WoW going on.
I usually am. (Grin/smirk)
LOL.
Are you serious? What are you going to do, walk around the table looking at what each individual is writing? Demand to see the notes everyone is taking?
I rarely take issue with typos or grammar, but it is “you’re fired” and not “your fired”. I say this only to laugh at you more. Bottomline, you’re a knucklehead and anyone who works for you should be concerned about your pettiness.
Thing is, if cicerokid is an effective manager and holds effective meetings, participants would be too busy paying attention to doodle. If the meetings were of the effective variety, anyone found doodeling should be considered a possible bad hire.
Bottomline: while firing on the spot might not be called for, cicerokid is hardly a knucklhead. Project much?
Okay…so assuming it’s only one row back, it can’t be Genga. I think its 77, Christopher Wright. The empty seat to the left of the computer has a photo under the lamp of two gentlemen, one of which looks like Genga in a very blurry way.
I do not employ spell-check during note-taking or blogging. As a manager, I could check your notes taken at a meeting in order to determine if you are a team player or not. Advise to my hires: pay attention and take notes.
Dems playing keno during a meeting: not team players, hardly bi-partisan.
Heh, heh. As an architect, doodling at meetings is called “multi-tasking”.
Please Michelle, they were only watching baseball because women’s basketball is not on.
Ugggh, I live in CT and what a state! Lieberman is pimping a 6 million dollar indoor firing range for the police because all of a sudden neighbors are unhappy.
Here..take some more money plese
the important thing is they are finalizing their budget, and as we can all see, the dem group is absolutely not interested in what the rep group might say. sounds familiar. can them all and start over.
Introduction of bill funding purchase of privacy filters for legislators’ laptops in 3, 2, 1…
I love the pure adrenaline rush of watching fundamentally sound sporting activities. The way they cover all the passing lanes on a full court defense… the unmistakable sound of a thundering layup…such a rush.
I’m pretty that is not PC!
chap, two comments: one, good detective work trying to identify the “players” – especially trying to do so accurately.
And OT, I’ve been wondering how your kitty is doing.
I think these legislators should sue the state – one of those “attractive nuisance” things…it’s not their fault.
Now we know why Pelosi & Reid won’t accept any of the republicans approx. 800 amendments and ideas into HR 3200 bill.
Reid (from vegas) and peloser are always busy.
Maybe WE The People need control of said internet, this seems to be a crisis to me.
All of the computers in our office are stripped of their built-in games before they’re placed on our desks. We cannot upload anything to them without IT doing it. This is true of all federal government computers on individuals’ desks. Why is this not true of state computers in Connecticut (or any other state, for that matter)?
Love this possible subliminal dis in the caption for the photo:
House Minority Leader Lawrence F. Cafero Jr., R-Norwalk, far right, speaks while colleagues play solitaire on their computers as the House convenes to vote on a new budget for the fiscal year in the Capitol, in Hartford, Conn., Monday, Aug., 31, 2009. (JESSICA HILL/ASSOCIATED PRESS / August 31, 2009)
Of course technically it correct that he is located in the “far right” positioning of the picture. Then again there is no one else speaking so the picture is self-explanatory if just the name of the person speaking is mentioned. Perfect dig with complete plausible denial but it would be no surprise if the photographer waited to get a shot with the Republican minority speaker placed to the “far right” of the shot so as to be able label the shot that way.
Wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes a subliminal trend among photographers.
Wasn’t it Will Rogers who said this about our Congress in, what, 1925:
“A man stands up and starts talking but says nothing. Nobody listens. Then everybody disagrees.”
At least my lawmaker was not pictured, though equally useless.
You don’t think it had anything to do with wanting to capture the lawmakers playing solitaire in the same frame as the guy speaking?
Don’t overthink this.
Here’s the thing. The Republican is speaking and the democrats are stealing taxpayer money by playing games on their computers.
If the democrats were speaking and these were Republicans goofing off, we’d never hear the end of it.
Too bad this can’t go into their voting record.
Socialist health care – Yes
Letting felons vote – Yes
Playing games on the taxpayer dollar – 75% of the time
This is why, whether you are talking about state or federal government, their power and size should be limited by Constitutional amendment(s). That way they could play and diddle all they like and only cause limited damage. As it stands now they are virtually unaccountable with access to unlimited power.
Under the present constructs and lack of restraint, these crooks can cause enormous problems (see Sub-Prime Debacle, early 21st century).
Related atricles.
Iowa.
Virginia.
You are not an elected official. You are actually expected to accomplish something for your paycheck.
I couldn’t resist and photoshopped the solitaire screen but I’m not certain if I should post the link to it? (only a little bit of ’skin’)
You don’t think it had anything to do with wanting to capture the lawmakers playing solitaire in the same frame as the guy speaking?
Well the story of the solitaire-playing legislators was certainly the most riveting part of the piece…NOT!
There is no mention in the story about legislators playing solitaire, watching baseball, surfing the web for God knows what. And yet the Hartford Courant saw no need to mention the extracurricular activities because their probable view of the photo’s message is, “When the Republican minority leader speaks legislators voice their opinion of him and his words by turning to their laptops for entertainment/escape.”
It is not a stretch by any means to say that in a liberal state such as Connecticut this is not seen so much as a dis (since the photo’s subject matter wasn’t mentioned in the article) but a reasonable use of a legislator’s time when the wascily Republican minority leader pontificates.
If you think that is “over thinking” then please explain the comfort zone of having that one single photo for the piece and not following up with questions for the “entertained” legislator’s on their behavior. And even if the same legislators did this while fellow Dems were speaking the Hartford Courant decided to use the shot taken when the Republican minority leader was speaking.
You just like stepping in it don’t you? Spell check will not catch “your” versus “you’re”, that is up to the intelligence and scholarship of the individual.
And, it is “advice” not “advise”. Again, spell check would not catch that, it is up to the intelligence and scholarship of the individual.
Good greif, that you would admit to wanting to examine the notes of your hires is scarey. Far more scarey is that you hire only “Dems”. Or, is it that you would not discipline republicans who doodled, or played keno? Ummm, how would you know who is a democrat, and who is a republican? And, which is playing keno? Do you have some sort of test to separate your ‘hires’?
Be bold, take both dems and reps to task for playing keno.
You are at the bottom of the hole, stop digging.
zyzzyg, are you really going to go on about intelligence of an individual based on spelling and grammar on a blog comment? If so, I might point out it’s grief, not greif. You have written that one in several places. Also, things are scary, not scarey.
Cicerokid’s comment about Democrats playing Keno is about the image Michelle posted, not his own meetings.
Your point that people are known to do idle things during meetings is noted. However, you should also consider that Connecticut is one of two states that do not have an approved budget despite Democrats having a significant majority. Their plan is to borrow more money while increasing spending over the next two years. While the minority party is pointing out that some of their programs (e.g. warning senior citizens about ladders and throw rugs) are inappropriate for the times, they’re playing solitaire.
This is not some idle, run of the mill meeting about small matters. This should be important to them.
LOL /Salt
yes I have seen District 9. I rather enjoyed it, but SHoward was right, many plot holes defy easy explaination. Overall pretty good movie if you lgm your brain and try not to analyze it too closely.
Sorry, but if they are playing solitaire, they are “doing no harm”. Let them play. And then throw them all out at the next election…if there is one.
I would repect them if they were playing Free Cell.
I wonder when the Democrats will realize most of them have been hoodwinked. I know they are liberals but Obama has gone way over the edge for changing America. We all should have asked “into what”?
Now you know why people hate watching movies with me.
Good point I should have thought of before: if the knuckleheads are playing solitaire, they can’t do too much. Unless, of course, one of them is doing all the hard lifting while the rest veg out then vote the party line later on.
That’s MY game!! I love it.
Nice try. But if you’ll check the chart, the seats are in pairs, separated by the mike desks. Genga’s seat is on the left of the pair, with the mike desk to his left, and directly behind Lambert.
Genga it is.
Gen-ga. Gen-GA. Gen-GA! GEN-GA!
Is that pronounced with a hard or soft G?
With the former, it sounds like you’re chanting for a certain wooden game of balance.
FIFY.
ECS
It’s a good thing they weren’t watching ‘cinemas’. They would have to be ‘doppled’.
Well they certainly deserve a break after all the work they got done this year. Eminent domain (Kelo vs. New London) was resolved. Or maybe I’m thinking of almost every other state…
Well they did get their annual bunch of bridges named after politicians. And got several Cub Scout and Brownie troops introduced to the chamber. There’s accomplishments for you!
It get’s more frustrating living in the 860 area code every year.
Fair enough. Taking my lumps.
Though I did point out in my post #43 how I felt about typos and grammar. I provided a response to a manager wanting to fire employees for doodling. Not an excuse, or reason. I did it.
Yep, we only saw a picture of what Dems were doing. I wonder what the Reps were doing? And, yes bad behaviour on one side does not justify the bad behaviour for another.
Please refer to my very first post #13. Well, maybe you have because you noted that doodling is simply idle behaviour, which I conclude is much ado about nothing.
Yes, there are critical issues at hand in the CT Legislature, however what is a single Legislator supposed to do about it while another is speaking on the floor?
Yep, taking my lumps. Oh, and by the way, do you agree that an employee should be fired for doodling?
I’m just practicing to get ready to go fight that traffic ticket I got last week.
I worked for the government doing internet security and turned people in for doing this same crap…and yes they did get into trouble…not much but they would have their internet access turned off….and we took off all games when we configured the desktops/laptops…if found with software on the laptops they were in big trouble…
I’m reasonably certain they could find something productive to do if they were going to so blatantly ignore the minority party speaker.
How many of these same legislators would later tell their constituents that they simply don’t have the time to read the bills they vote on? Purely speculative, sure, but we’ve seen this type of thing at the federal level. I doubt these same three have bothered to read the budget.
FWIW, I had no enjoyment in doing it, but you said you did it specifically to laugh at someone with which you disagreed and then ironically called him petty.
I think you just let your emotions get the better of you here, particularly since he didn’t say anything offensive or even directed at you.
Depends on the occupation and the type of meeting. I can see both sides of this one. It’s not something where a single rule would apply to all circumstances.
However, Cicerokid said his meeting, not any meeting. I don’t know what he does or the importance of his meetings. No matter how we might feel, though, if he’s the boss he gets to set the standard and I suspect his employees understand this.
Would it be too much to ask as voters that we have higher expectations of our legislators?
Nothing wrong with asking, though having an expectation that Legislators sit quietly with their hands folded might be too much to ask. Would they be allowed to doodle? Teasing.
Reading bills is certainly one thing, but wouldn’t that be a difference without distinction? Ignoring the speaker, whether playing video games, reading a bill, newspaper, or magazine is still ignoring the speaker.
These are adults and they can choose to do with their time what they will. Maybe, they have already read the bill. Take a snap shot of any Legislature in the country and I would bet dimes to donuts that many people are doing many things. Nope, it doesn’t make it right, that is just the reality.
Like I said earlier. Much ado about nothing.
OH, what does FWIW mean?
For What It’s Worth.
Wow, when I’m at work, I actually have to work or I get fired. Too bad that doesn’t hold true for government employees.