Damned if you do, damned if you do

The Boston Globe is reporting this morning that Pittsfield Mayor James Ruberto and former Red Sox General Manager Dan Duquette are being hauled in on ethics charges for not conducting an illegal transaction:

The Massachusetts State Ethics Commission is holding a hearing today in a controversy involving Mayor James M. Ruberto of Pittsfield, former Red Sox general manager Daniel Duquette, and a pair of tickets to the 2004 World Series.

The commission's investigators allege that Duquette's sale of two tickets to the 2004 World Series to Ruberto at face value – when they were commanding as much as $2,000 apiece -- violated the state's conflict of interest law.

Here is the problem with that charge: If Duquette had sold the mayor the two ducats at $2,000 each, he'd have been in violation of the state's anti-scalping laws. In fact, if Duquette had got $250 each for the tix, he'd have been breaking the law.

And we all know what would happen if it wen't the other way. What do you think woulld happen if someone found out that politician X got two tickets to a Bruins-Thrashers game on a snowy Thursday in January for half-price. Do you think think the fact that scalpers on the street were only selling them for half-price would help him or her out?

So I guess the moral of the story is that officials subject to the ethics law--at least as it was written in 2004--can only attend sporting events where they pay full price for a ticket and where the street value of the ticket is no greater than full price. So if you are a pol looking to go to a Sox game, best to find a cold night in May when the Royals are in town so you don't have to go before the ethics commission.

Recovering

Last weekend, I had a couple of the largest traffic days in the history of this blog, thanks to the interest people have in Leominster mayor and city hall Romeo Dean Mazzarella. Seemed like a great opportunity to capture a bunch of new readers. An good aggressive week of blogging could have done wonders for the enterprise.

Then, nothing.

There is a reason. On Tuesday, I went in for fairly major surgery. Nothing life-threatening, and nothing that wasn't planned, but having a doctor cut you up and staple you back together takes a toll no matter what.

Not having any surgery before, I figured that it wouldn't be too tough to at least keep writing in tthe aftermath. I was so sure of that, I brought a netbook along to the hospital so that I could keep up with this site while I was waiting to come home. I didn't have the first idea what was coming.

What I found was that even though I felt better than I thought I would, I couldn't concentrate on writing. I was on a schedule (still am to an extent), where I had to eat at a certain time, drink at a certain time, breathe deeply at a certain time, walk at a certain time, to the point that I was thinking so much about that stuff that I couldn't concentrate on much else.

My recovery has been flying along. I feel great -- actually I feel a lot better than I thought I would -- I'm starting to get out for walks a couple of times a day, driving again, you know, everyday stuff. Hopefully I'll be able to get back in the saddle of this site as well.

Anyway, in case you've been wondering why No Drumlins went dark, there you go.