Crony Capitol -ism

At the risk of sounding like a terminally naive goo-goo, I have to say that this crap is completely inexcusable.

Gov. Steve Beshear’s chief of staff, Adam Edelen, is a partner in private business deals with top Frankfort lobbyist Bob Babbage, who represents a long list of clients wanting something from state government.

Edelen and Babbage are partners with Ralph Coldiron — a Beshear appointee at the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security — in Chartwell Land Co., which recently developed and sold a $660,000 home in Bourbon County.

Edelen and Babbage also co-own a new condo unit in downtown Lexington, in the Main & Rose building, which they bought a year ago for $257,100.

On Wednesday, Edelen, 34, said his private deals don’t influence his work for the governor, and vice versa, so there is no conflict of interest.

Read the whole thing, if you've got the stomach for it.

Page One has the practicality rationalization:

If we’re being up front, here, everyone who works for the governor has some sort of business or relationship that could be considered questionable or a conflict. But that’s how people get their jobs. That’s how politics work. It’s all about who you know, what you do, where you’ve been. So that in and of itself shouldn’t be used to vilify Adam. This situation should, however, serve as a reminder to everyone working in high-level government that they need to be even more transparent than the law requires to avoid headaches and embarrassment.

Nope, not buying. It's long past time we stopped thinking the only people qualified to serve at the highest levels of state government are wealthy business people and lawyers fatally compromised by money relationships with companies seeking contracts or favors from said state government.

Kentucky is chock-a-block with brilliant, talented, skilled people who don't owe their success to scumbags like Dudley Webb. People whose credibility rests on experience working for non-profit organizations, or as teachers or firefighters, or in the military.

They are nowhere to be found in the upper levels of this administration, probably because they couldn't afford the campaign contribution price.

There's nothing wrong with an administration filling its politically appointed positions with campaign contributors and others who have proven their loyalty to the governor - that's the whole point of having non-merit positions.

But a smart governor will ensure that such loyal contributors will also be competent and free of conflicts of interest that hobble the administration and harm its initiatives.

Surely the last few months have proven that "business" has no monopoly on competence - exactly the opposite, in fact.

And Beshear's blind reliance on the money-grubbers of "business" to fill his cabinet is as good an explanation as any for the fatal weakness of his administration.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.