Bye, honey! I'm off to the office to do some comptrollin

I like that word, "comptroller". It's kind of a funny word. Look it up, and you'll find a definition along the lines of "One who supervises the money expenditures of a government or business", which makes me wonder: Is "comptroller" its own word, or is there an actual root word "comptrol"? My rigorous research into this matter, consisting of two or three online searches of dictionary sites, doesn't turn up a lot of information on the matter. One site doesn't even list "comptrol" as a word, while another simply cross-references the word to "control", so is "comptrol" a more antiquated word that's been replaced in almost all cases, except in our modern use of "comptroller"? And thus would it be false to say that a comptroller is one who comptrols?

Anyway, here in New York State, we've got comptroller stuff on the brain, because our own comptroller, a fine public servant named Alan Hevesi, has turned out to be the victim of a vicious smear campaign, which is in turn based on the fact that Mr. Hevesi himself has turned out to be, shall we say, something of a crook. He was supposed to win his re-election bid without raising a sweat, but now it's looking like even if he does win he'll likely be forced from office either voluntarily (i.e., "I am resigning my office to spare my family the indignity of a long investigation"), or involuntarily (i.e., they're going to impeach his ass).

Oh well. I'm never one to want crooks to stick around just because they're from my party; as frustrating as the 1994 midterm elections were for me, I couldn't help but be happy that Dan Rostenkowski was gone. But anyway, I'm left scrambling for someone to vote for in ten days, someone whom I will trust to fulfill my comptrolling needs. Maybe the Republican is OK, but I frankly have no intention of voting for a Republican in the foreseeable future in any election. And there's a Libertarian, but for many reasons, I don't much take them seriously either.

So I guess I'll cast my first Green Party vote ever. Will wonders never cease!

(Yeah, I could vote for Hevesi, since I hopefully wouldn't be too uncomfortable with whatever Democrat ends up being appointed or whatever to the Comptroller's office once Hevesi is tossed overboard, but I'm not that wild about that particular process. I know that this situation is unusual, but surely the New York State Democratic Party knew that Hevesi's scandal was brewing, so maybe someone could have leaned on him to step aside. But then, this is a state where the state government's attitude toward voters is something like, "Oh, you've all been good, so you can go ahead and vote for something. Just as long as you don't start thinking that voting will influence public policy in this state!" Ugh.)