Pam is surprised, disgusted even, that Holy Joe Lieberman has backed off criticism of the Bush Administration for its handling of Katrina and its aftermath.
I’m not. Surprised, that is (disgusted is another matter).
One thing: despite having lost some HQs, Hartford is still the center of the insurance industry. As I know from when my father lost his job at Travelers during one of the first waves of insurance-company layoffs in the late 80s, as goes the insurance industry, so goes Hartford. And since Connecticut’s a small state and the defense industry has pretty well dried up (it was dying even when I was there 15 years ago), the insurance industry is more or less it.
Actually, the surprise is that he remembered that he has constituents at all.
Wow, zuzu, I hadn’t realized that. That’s an excellent point, and it makes so much (disgusting) sense. That explains a lot about the whole debacle. That man should be so ashamed of himself, but I know he won’t be. He’ll remain convinced that he’s a moral, independent thinker, when in fact he’s become a blind tool of the Bush administration.
Yep.
Cleanup and recovery is going to cost the insurance companies and reinsurance companies a whole fuckload of money, and it’s in Joe’s interest to support anything that excludes coverage for a lot of people because the insurance companies will benefit.
To be fair, if the industry takes a big hit, it will throw a lot of people out of their jobs, and the state not only really never recovered from the 80s layoffs, but it’s largely lost the defense contracts as well (remember how hard Joe fought for the obsolete Seawolf submarine? Without it, Electric Boat would pretty much have shut down).
So true. They used to announce Hartford as the insurance capital as you flew into Bradley. It’s the identity of the city. Just about everyone I graduated from high school with now works (in some capacity) in insurance. It’s the go-to job of the state. Graduated from college and have no idea what to do? Go work at Aetna. Or Travellers. Or Lincoln. You get the idea. When the layoffs and office closings happen, people get really worried about the future of the state. We don’t really have much else.
But none of this excuses the fact that Joe has pretty much abandoned CT, along with his Democratic ideals .