Jennifer

Field reports from a libertarian fed up with the status quo.

By Jennifer Abel



Shad Derby Bash, It's A Gas Gas Gas (To Get There) PDF Print E-mail
Written by Jennifer Abel   
Gas prices are high enough to change the way I measure distance: last year, if you’d asked me how far Windsor’s annual Shad Derby was from my house, I’d’ve said “About 45 minutes.” Now it’s “about seven dollars, round trip,” and it’s only going higher.

I went to the Derby in part because I’m a sucker for small-town historical fairs, and also to say hi to Joe Visconti, who’d set up a campaign booth there. But on my way to the Derby on May 17, I bought gas at a record cost of more than four bucks a gallon.

I’m not the only one worried about gas prices; Joe’s situation is even worse than mine. My resume lists mostly English-major jobs, which means that when I carry “equipment” to work this amounts to paper, pens and perhaps a book or two. Joe’s a contractor, and lugging construction equipment around takes a lot more gas than moving writer’s supplies.

The morning of the Shad Derby he bought coffee at a nearby gas station and then told me, “The station owner’s saying six dollars a gallon by the end of summer.”

“Six?” I shook my head. “I read five in the news last night. That’s bad enough; six’ll really hurt. And whatever the price is, I don’t expect it to drop after this summer, either.”

If the folks at the Shad Derby were any indication, a lot of people in Connecticut are worried about gas prices. Despite a few limited mass-transit options in some of the larger cities, for the most part you can’t get around without a car here. And the fairgoers in Windsor knew this.

Joe’s friend Betty, an artist, brought her face-painting kit to the Derby and spent the day brushing colorful patterns onto children’s faces while Joe chatted with their parents. Neither of us were surprised to hear that “People are more worried about gas than they are about the war,” as Joe said.

“The price of gas has a more immediate effect,” I replied. “And it’s more likely to grow worse.”

I vaguely remember, as a child back in the 1970s, hearing words like “energy crisis” each night when my parents watched the news. Looks like today’s kids will grow up with similar memories.

There’s no single magic-bullet solution, but alternative energies, along with more efficient use (read: conservation) of the energy we’ve got, will certainly get us closer to whatever solution there is. Joe thinks tax incentives for conservation and research into alternative energies are part of the answer.

This is probably more feasible than my plan: go back in time and design America so that we never got so dependent on oil in the first place.
 
Seeking Bigfoot On The Campaign Trail PDF Print E-mail
Written by Jennifer Abel   

The intrepid naturalist wishing to observe Connecticut political candidates in their native habitat must awaken at a ridiculously early hour to catch the campaign bus. At least, that's what I had to do on May 1 when Joe Visconti kicked off his Congressional campaign to represent the Nutmeg State's First District.

No matter where you are on the political spectrum, running a successful campaign requires help from the sort of people career guidebooks call "detail-oriented." In Joe's case, much of this detail orientation comes from two Professional Republicans associated with state- or district-level party headquarters who accompanied Joe on the campaign bus on May 1.

Those who care about fashion will be unsurprised to hear that Joe and the PRs all wore suits. That's to be expected with any party's campaign, be it Democrat, Green or my beloved Libertarians. More casually dressed were the two camera-toting interns from the Connecticut School of Broadcasting, who spent the day collecting video footage of scenes like Joe making speeches, Joe shaking hands, and me looking up from my book saying "That thing better not be on."

We all met in a Farmington commuter lot at 7:30 in the morning, and were on the road by eight. The schedule called for six stops scattered throughout the district: three City Halls (in Torrington, Bristol and Manchester), two private golfers' clubs in West Hartford and Newington, and breakfast at a restaurant in Barkhamstead.

"One-third of your total itinerary takes place on golf courses," I observed to the PRs. "You really are Republicans, aren't you?"

Republican or no, the day played out exactly as you'd expect from a challenger introducing his campaign against a long-entrenched incumbent: We arrived at each stop before the scheduled start time. Before giving his speech, Joe milled about for awhile, chatting with whoever had come out to the event. The short speech basically boiled down to "Hi, I'm running for Congress and here's the reasons I'll be better than the guy there now." Then Joe took questions from the audience, and we all went to the next stop where he started all over again.

One stop stood out: the very first of the day, Torrington City Hall at nine in the morning.

Torrington's Mayor Ryan Bingham hosted the event, and while making small talk with Joe he mentioned in passing that, during the three years Bingham's been mayor, he's never once met Congressman John Larson.

I thought little of this until after Joe's speech, when he invited questions from the audience. A gentleman sitting near the back raised his hand and asked Joe if he would ever bother coming out to Torrington.

"Am I out here now?" Joe asked.

Later, over breakfast at a restaurant in Barkhamstead, Joe and the PRs talked about that. "It's something to hear a three-year Mayor say he'd never met the Congressman from his district," one of the PRs observed.

"You'll see Bigfoot in Barkhamstead before you see John Larson," Joe said.

"Well, this is an election year," someone else pointed out.

"Tell the good folk of Torrington and Barkhamstead not to take it personally," I said. "For all the time I spent as a journalist covering Larson's own district, and all the times I called his office for a quote - or even a press release - about whatever legislation he was pushing at the time, I've never spoken to or heard from John Larson either."

Which is one reason I won't repeat the vote-for-Larson mistake I made last election.

In all my time working in The Media, I've never been one to annoy politicians with questions about their personal lives. I only call politicians to ask about their actual jobs.

And an elected official who consistently refuses to answer or even listen to questions about legislative matters affecting his constituents might be fine in a hereditary monarchy, but not in a democratic republic like America.
 
Behold! The Republicans In The Mist PDF Print E-mail
Written by Jennifer Abel   

When you start hanging out with Republicans in the year 2008, your friends nag you about selling your soul to the prince of darkness and why you shouldn’t do that.

 

Especially when you’re not a Republican at all, but a left-leaning civil libertarian who’s been a registered Independent these last many years.

 

(Okay, I did once spend five days, 23 hours and 24 minutes registered as a Republican so I could back a dark horse in a primary. But as soon as I left the voting booth, I drove straight to City Hall and re-registered Independent.)

 

My nagging friends live mostly out of state, and I tell them: “Guys, you don’t understand how Connecticut works. We’ve got a Republican governor, yes, but most of the state’s run by Democrats.

 

"There’s elected offices they’ve held for half a century now. So they’re the ones with the power here, and they’re usually the ones pulling shady government shenanigans. Not the Republicans. Yeah, I know. It’s Bizarro World.”

 

I used to cover West Hartford for a local alt-weekly, which is how I first met a guy who (at the time) was the Official Town Malcontent: Joe Visconti. And I went about town and state alike trying to report on the powers that be, all so tight-lipped they’d barely tell me what time it was without making me file a Freedom Of Information document first.

 

Meanwhile the OTM’s going around complaining about the lack of openness and transparency in government, and at some point while typing my umpteenth request for information I paused long enough to massage my carpal-tunnel-stricken wrists and think “Yep, he’s got a point (ouch) dang, this hurts.”

 

A few months later Joe mounted a dark-horse campaign for a town council seat. When he won I told him congratulations and thought: “Now that he’s an elected official rather than a gadfly outsider, I hope he doesn’t become one of Them.”

 

He didn’t. But after awhile he decided to run for Congress against a longstanding incumbent, and my job vanished around the same time when the alt-weekly started shedding positions. So I called Joe to give him the nice-knowing-you news, and he invited me to spend my newfound free time hanging out with his campaign.

 

“Joe,” I said, “I’m a –”

 

“I know you’re a libertarian, not a Republican,” Joe assured me. “That’s why I want you around, to give me an outsider’s perspective.”

 

“Hmm,” I replied. “Let me think about this a bit.”

 

And I considered that time, shortly after I’d started writing for the alt-weekly, when I thumbed through some of the more rococo advertisements in its back pages and thought, “If I got a job working for one of these phone sex lines, I’ll bet I’d get a great story out of it.”

I daresay I did. But the story inspired a little controversy among the locals, some of whom didn’t think their new reporter should engage in such stunts ’twixt town council meetings.

 

I hadn’t met Joe yet, though we’d exchanged a couple of polite e-mails. But he stepped into the controversy to publicly state he saw nothing wrong with a reporter doing her job.

 

That’s why I say to my friends: “Things are different here in Connecticut. When a writer tries pushing the envelope now and again, it’s the Republicans who stick up for her while the Democrats get all indignant. Bizarro World, I know. So I appreciate your sale-of-my-soul concerns, but they won’t be an issue. I view this as a learning experience. You know, the whole Dian Fossey Republicans In The Mist thing? Except they won’t let me put fog machines in their houses.”