Friday March 21
Today Blog-o-rama, alone in the Capitol with a few other ink-stained wretches and a pair of radio reporters, asks why is a Holy Day of Obligation in the Roman Catholic calendar, a full-blown day off for 52,000 state employees?
It’s the 21st century, so shouldn’t we have finally done something about that separation-of-church-and-state thing?
You’d think so, yet the only state employee earning his paycheck today is the omnipresent Attorney General Dick Blumenthal, who, because he’s Jewish, is not too likely to show up at 3 p.m. Mass to observe the cruxifixion of Jesus. Blumenthal, in a near-empty state office building, took a shot at JuicyCampus.com. (See Saturday’s Connecticut Post)
So who of the 52,000 aforementioned state employees may miss the first half of the UConn men’s NCAA game this afternoon because they’ll be at that 3 p.m. Mass?
The Connecticut Catholic Conference claims 1.3 million Catholics in the state’s 3.5-million general population. Let err on the high side and say that’s a third of the state population. So the state is observing a massive work-stoppage holiday for less than 17,300 state employees?
The rest, presumably, are spreading their highly paid incomes around in the consumer sector today. So maybe it’s not a bad thing. Afterall, the last paid state holiday was wayyyyyyy back on February 18, President’s Day.
Why, state employees actually worked for a whole month without a paid holiday.
They must be exhausted.