Marry in Massachusetts

Campaign Caution or Cowardice?

2012-02-02T12:53:00.000-05:00

It must be close to impossible for a progressive sort not to like Elizabeth Warren's candidacy for U.S. Senate. Think of John Stewart playing off her charm long before the race when she was pitching the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on his show (8:08 in). To her enthusiastic argument, he said, "When you explain it like that, I know your husband's backstage, but I still want to make out with you."

The other two candidates still in the contest for the Democratic nomination are not so charmed. In particular, as they take their small budgets and big ideas from one public event to another, she is absent but always a force. When there were seven and now the three, her campaign cancelled or blew off one group appearance after another. Assuming she shows for one on Cape Cod next month, that will be the only one before the party convention in June in Springfield.

That attitude is understandable, expedient, and to Jim King and Marisa DeFranco, infuriating. I heard that clearly two days ago at the candidate forum at Boston Latin School run by the Help Youth Vote! Coalition there. They showed while Warren's campaign was unable to attend so far has yet to come up with alternative dates.

At the student meet-and-greet lines and semicircles before the formal event, each candidate noted they were there, they believed in democracy, they were willing to debate their platforms.

The Why Not

Conventional political wisdom has it not to waste time and risk blunders unnecessarily. Warren has gotten tote bags full of endorsements. Her contributions are in the millions while King and DeFranco's are in the thousands of dollars.

All three candidates have jobs with important, productive tasks to perform. Yet two of them manage to schedule themselves so they can appear at these quasi-debate thingummies at colleges, high schools and other public places.

To them, Warren is being cowardly and disrespectful of the democratic process. I surmise that her campaign figures it's smart politicking.

DeFranco is bluntest about it. Her website splash opens with a press release headlined U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE MARISA DEFRANCO CALLS ON PROFESSOR WARREN TO STOP DUCKING DEBATES AND FORUMS.

The release details cancelled appearances. It reads in part:

Public debate is a critical part of the electoral process. Debates provide voters with the opportunity to see their potential nominees in an unscripted setting. They also require candidates to address issues beyond sound bites and talking points. And they give voters a chance to see how well candidates perform under pressure.

We can set aside first that these short-answer fora are not true debates (as well as the cutesy Professor Warren in the headline). Yet I am pretty sure that even big fans would prefer that Warren overruled her handlers here.

She's doing a lot of appearances, but as the solo act. She lets those work with her media and advertising. That's safe and has gotten correspondingly boring.

In that vein, both King and DeFranco had views on the role of money in positioning for the race. She is a big supporter of public financing of campaigns. He questions out-of-state contributions. Both are aghast at the Citizens United SCOTUS decision legalizing unlimited, secret campaign contributions and expenditures, euphemistically billed as free speech. Also, both said they did not and would not take super-PAC and special interest donations, while Warren did.

He said that "Both Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren have raised a bundle of money...and that's good for them." He called for an accounting of how much was out of state and how much tied to businesses.

DeFranco remained both confident and defiant. As she put it, "Money does not win elections." She cited her higher poll numbers when there were seven in the race and she was outspent 10:1 or 100:1. "Make your decision on the candidate who can actually beat Scott Brown on ideas and that's me."

Nonetheless, Warren is likely to appear on a dais only one more time with King and DeFranco. That seems like an odd attitude for someone who presents so well, who is a champion orator going back to high school, and who has thought about virtually every important idea big or wee related to this campaign.

Yet trying to pin the coward label on candidates doesn't often get traction. Here in Boston, I think of Maura Hennigan's attack ad against Mayor Tom Menino in 2005. She went after him for ducking her during the campaign. As true as that may have been, she still got skunked.

Surely if Warren becomes the Dem nominee, with or without a primary, she and Brown will go head-to-head more than once before November. Having seen her in action as well as on TV and had her on Left Ahead, I'd put my money on her without question.

Meanwhile, you have to wonder whether mixing it up with King and DeFranco now might not be good practice.

Others have suggested that one or both of them might not get the 10,000 signatures in about 10 weeks required by state law to advance to the convention. In Spingfield, they'd each have to receive the vote of 15% of the delegates (around 750) to advance to the primary at the beginning of September. Before those occur, would appearing with them give them more legitimacy than not doing so?

Regardless, everyone but Warren's camp is likely to agree this smells bad.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, DeFranco, Jim King, BLS, Elizabeth Warren, Congress, U.S. Senate

Promise and Problems for Transgender Child

2012-02-02T10:43:00.000-05:00

I'm tempted to call it the magic headband. From the day the 8-year-old transgender student wore it to class, there was a transformation. The angry, screaming child who would flip over desks suddenly became a happy scholar.

Who could find problems with that?

ID note: To respect the privacy of all involved as this unfolds, this identifies the child only by first name, does not reveal the locale or school, and cites the grandmother as GM and mother as Mommy.

Source note: My j-school/newspaper background normally has me going to multiple sources. This draws almost entirely on the candid conversation with GM. Future updates may include lawyers, the therapist, the principal or others, but there's plenty in the experiences from her view.

The principal of the school was among those who has not yet learned to deal with John presenting as Jen. In particular, she'd like Mommy and GM to punish Jen for using the girls restroom and apparently claims Jen will do so "over my dead body." Unfortunately, in New Hampshire, the legislature rejected the bill that would add legal protections to transgender children and adults. The other New England states prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.

Acknowledged transgender is not common. Estimates run from 3% down to a quarter of 1%. Yet it's real when it's real, and denial, anger and other irrational responses help no one and change nothing.

Revealing Jen

This child's background is not so simple as many of our lives and goes far below gender identity. For starters, a single mom with a daughter found out and met the brother and sister five and three year olds who had been in foster care for years. She decided to bring them into her home and begin the adoption process.

That's remarkable enough. In what would have dissuaded most prospective parents, the boy, John, was deemed severely autistic, low verbal, prone to outbreaks, and not toilet trained at five. GM reports that her daughter asked her, "Do you think I can do this?" She replied, "If anyone can do this, you can."

The adoption took a year, but two years ago, the pair legally came to Mommy. He had already been toilet trained as soon as they came into the home, as GM put it, "in two weeks...with love." He was still unhappy but quickly more verbal. GM notes that both children had arrived gaunt and pale. Even their skin color changed, to the point where the doctor's office didn't recognize them.

There was no tension with the existing daughter. She was fine with a sister, but in particular had always wanted a brother.

The wrinkle was in the boy's fondness for things frilly. He liked to dress up in girls' clothes. Mommy and GM quickly became aware this was not transvestism. Rather, he said he was a girl.

They took him to a therapist, who asked among other questions, "Have you always felt like a girl?" John replied, "No, I've always been a girl."

While Mommy and GM are quick to point out they just love the children and want to do what's best for them, let us note their wisdom and equanimity as well. They did not flip out, did not scream at or hit John, did not do the gender-identity version of trying to convert a lefthander, and did not demand that he live double school/home lives.

Starting wearing dresses at home and being very saddened by having to wear a boy's suit for his adoption ceremony, John left no doubt about identity. Willing to present as a girl at school, as Jen, meant simultaneously being honest and risking what came from classmates and teachers.

Trouble from Above

Both Jen and her sister are shorter and slighter than many peers, but neither lacks courage. Jen has retained and expanded her friends, says GM, who noted with pride the attitude of the younger sister to the few students who would taunt on the playground. "She protects Jen. She'll get right between her and children on the playground. She'll say, 'Don't call her a boy. That's my sister.'"

Jen insisted on going to school in dresses. The therapist supported this and told Jen to use the girls room when no one else was there. Mommy and GM met with teachers and the principal several times to let them know what would happen. The principal even met with Jen in her office to prepare.

Then the letter arrived. It seems one parent had complained about Jen using the girls room. "The school was going to pursue legal action if (Mommy) didn't punish her for this," said GM. "Plus, they were going to follow her around school." GM and Mommy weren't about to punish Jen or accept separate and unequal treatment.

Jen had gone from a problem child to a student of the month. She loved school and had lots of friends. Now, said GM, "Jen came home crying saying she can't use the bathroom, 'because I'm making them uncomfortable.'"

In the closest thing the school came to trying a compromise, the principal said Jen would have to use the nurse's office restroom. While GM and Mommy heard this and thought they could frame it as their idea and something special. Unfortunately, the principal presented this as a mandate to Jen before letting them know what was up. Thus, Jen felt punished and tried to go the dayswithout using any restroom.

More to Be Done

Jen loves school, but short-term, she's not there. Until arrangements are in place and there is a clear understanding, she's being home schooled. Oddly GM and Mommy had some experience with this years before in a previous school with the first daughter. She was diabetic and the school would not medicate her as needed for her health. They resolved that and got her back in.

Likewise, the aim her is to get Jen back in class with her friends, who GM says are fine with the transition. Meanwhile, GM and Mommy have been in contact with a GLAD lawyer as well as counterparts in two other states. The school will receive guidelines on how to deal with a transgender student.

GM seems singularly well organized and a formidable force. She and Mommy had also kept detailed records of the entire process, including all communications and meetings. They are more than willing to do their parts to make this work as smoothly and pleasantly as possible. They also have not stopped reading and speaking with people who understand they physical, psychological and legal aspects.

Their attitude includes that a transgender student going to school in a dress, "is not going to be the hardest thing she'll go through."

In fact, their surprise came when they had to confront their own related issue. First it was from the older daughter, the one who had always wanted a brother. As John transitioned to Jen, GM said, "She cried and said, 'I'm losing my brother!' That's when we realized we were losing him too." All had known John as he joined them and blossomed from the sad, autistic boy they first new into the happy Jen who loves school and is popular. "We've had to grieve John, " said GM. "John no longer exists."

Instead, Jen is ready to get on with her life. Mommy will see that her name is changed legally. Moreover, at this point it seems that sexual reassignment surgery is somewhere in the more distant future.

While Jen was initially unclear on genital anatomy, she knew she had a penis. When Mommy explained how girls and boys differed, Jen said, "Mommy, why do I have to wait? Can't you just cut off my penis, so people will like me?"

For those who would say such things as homosexuality is a lifestyle or in this case transgender is a choice that weird adults make, let us consider the reality of the latter with Jen. She is a child who has known early on what her true gender is. She hurts no one and wants to get on with her life and to develop as any child. Her grandmother, mother and sisters will do their part. It is a small enough thing to expect everyone else to let her go about that life.

Cross-post: This appears also at Harrumph!

Tags: massmarrier, transgender, student, New Hampshire, discrimination

The Sport of Chester Darling

2012-01-30T09:58:00.000-05:00

Technical writers and middle-school English teachers are not the only anal-retentive nitpickers. Lawyers can worry a detail to shreds.

Come 9 AM, Monday, February 9th, Courtroom One, John Adams Courthouse, Boston, the wrinkled old dog with the sock in his teeth will be Chester Darling...yet again. Out of retirement, apparently for the sheer fun and ego thrill of it, he's making another unbidden curtain call.

In case you got on with your life, snap to. It's only been 13 months since Chuck Turner, (insert disgraced, heroic, or other laden adjective) ex-Boston City Councilor headed off to Hazelwood Penitentiary in West Virginia. He and Darling have been churning out the appeals.

The short of it is that after legal fights for two years, he was convicted of three charges from an FBI sting. It was basically soliciting a bribe and lying about it. You can get your fill by searching this blog for coverage.

Certainly Darling and Turner elicit the mandatory observation that they differ politically. They are also each cantankerous enough to roll around in joy at the dichotomy. Turner as extreme lefty champion of the poor, people of color and LGBT is a stark contrast to Darling's extreme righty supporter of anti-gay causes, notably taking the appeal to the SCOTUS that upheld the power of South Boston's St. Patrick's Day parade to exclude gay marchers. Also, Darling fought race-based school admissions.

At least publicly, Darling liked to portray this strangest snuggling of bedfellows as reasonable. He told the Globe, "Politically, I’m a little right, and he’s a little left...But that doesn’t mean anything when it comes to the value of a person...I didn’t hesitate to agree to represent him, because I know the guy’s character and value."

The values remaining in the legal aspect of this case seem to be that Turner is sure the City Council humiliated him (and cost his salary and benefits for the period) by enforcing its rule 40A. That conduct stipulation forced him from office between his conviction and sentencing.

Darling's contention is that the commonwealth statute that tosses an elected pol upon sentencing is all we need to worry our pretty little heads about. In contrast, 40A holds that "the council president may refer a matter to the council upon his/her determination that any member has engaged in conduct unbecoming a member of the Boston City Council or may be unqualified to sit on the body. A member may be unqualified by violating federal or state law, or any conditions imposed by the city’s charter, which includes violating any provisions of the three oaths of office."

This automatically triggers a meeting on the matter. The Council can oust the member by a two-thirds vote. The rule notes that any action "will be in accordance with local, state and federal law."

There's enough nit to pick for Darling.

You can download the PDF files of the appeal, the city's response, and the response to the response on the SJC page for this appeal. (Scroll down to Briefs.)

Not so fast!

He contends for Turner that the commonwealth's tripwire for ouster requires the Council to wait for sentencing. That's moot and may be the gist of the appeal. For its part, the city claims that its actions were legal, that "The Massachusetts Home Rule Amendment further authorized the removal of Turner as municipal action enjoys a presumption of validity in enforcing local rules which are consistent with the laws of the Commonwealth." (p. 49, Appellee's Boston Brief) In other words, he was convicted in federal court and had no place under 40A on Council.

Then Council President Michael Ross was not in a comfortable spot. Turner was hugely popular in his district, but most Bostonians seemed sick of real and perceived corruption from City Hall through the Statehouse. Turner and State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, the first two convicted in strings are both black, and the prosecution was thus smelly.

Here, I often have objected to the Home Rule process. That in effect means municipalities cannot rule at home. With lowered heads and shuffling feet, they approach legislators for the right to make their own rules. Anything big requires an elaborate rechartering as well. Here is another case where a city council gets the disobedient-child treatment. Darling is smart enough to play off this.

I'll trot down to Pemberton Square for this hearing. It may well be a regurgitation of the conclusion sections of the plaintiff and defendants' briefs. Darling presents with a bluster befitting a cartoon character. He looks like one too. Scanning the expressions of the Justices should likewise make for decent theater.

Tags: massmarrier, Chuck Turner, Boston, corruption, City Council, Chester Darling, FBI, home rule

Mayors Make Marriage Merriment

2012-01-23T09:59:00.000-05:00

Unlike NOM and other anti-marriage/adoption/gay sorts, 75 U.S. mayors publicly affirmed that they are for marriage and marriage equality. Representing big and small cities and towns, Maine to Oregon and even Alaska, they announced this in D.C. at the U.S. Conference of Mayors last week.

Their joint statement is here.

It's no coincidence that a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage, even though a large majority of states locked themselves into one-man/one-woman laws or amendments or both. The mayors seem much savvier and much less emotionally driven than legislators.

Some of the mayors spoke also of the advantages of SSM. NYC's Michael Bloomberg said:

In only a season, the freedom to marry has already made New York a stronger state. This isn't about partisanship or ideology. It's about extending the freedoms of our country to all people, and ensuring equal protection under the law. Mayors understand that welcoming committed gay couples to the rights and responsibilities of marriage isn't just the right thing to do. It's also the smart thing to do for the diverse, dynamic, forward-looking cities we're all working to build.

Boston's Tom Menino said:

Cities that cultivate diversity are places where creativity and innovation thrive," Menino said. "We've now had the freedom to marry in Boston for almost eight years. Since then we've seen more same-sex couples move to the city, and with that economic development, urban revitalization, and a spirit of pride and progress that are hallmarks of Boston.

Cities have long evolved most quickly of all and led the others.

Gingrich's Great Gimmicks

2012-01-20T09:02:00.001-05:00

Newt Gingrich defined his superpower in moving from self-indulgence to self-forgiveness. His outraged victimhood played at peak yesterday in South (by God) Carolina.

The pale, corpulent roué married most recently to the highly angular former mistress with the Bachmann-style just-been-shocked eyes has his appetites...and his alibis. Sure it's astonishing that such an ugly, amoral beast found, used and discarded multiple women. More so is that he uses those superpowers to sway the Southern voters.

Putatively at least, GOP sandlappers are highly credal Christians, literal fundamentalists who know the commandments in Exodus by number as well as content. Gingrich's flagrant, repeated, seemingly non-stop fornication and adultery should bring him ye olde shunning.

Amusing to someone who lived some years in South (by God) Carolina, I note that many locals have long distrusted Roman Catholics, including converted ones like him. Perhaps having two Mormons, a rarer rara avis, took the edge off of that. More likely though, Gingrich's brash posturing suits the coarseness of the audience. They'd rather elect a whoremaster than reelect an African American as POTUS.

Last night, we heard his superpower in its fullest throat. The debate moderator asked whether he'd comment on his second wife's story that he had been shtupping an employee for six years before asking her to approve theirs as an open marriage. Unbelievably, he got a standing O from the crowd with a double assault in return.

How dare anyone ask about this!?
He's already been forgiven for his sins.

His response started with outrage and played on paranoia and persecution. The lead was, "I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office, and I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that."

Note there that this is a version of the big lie from corporate boards. They pay outrageous packages to top managers who drastically decrease company value and profits, under the ruse that you have to pay for the best talent.

To many of us without such ego and id-based superpowers, long-term adultery and abandonment of one wife after another when each was seriously ill would be humbling. Instead, he shifted the onus to abuse of him by an elite media. That played fine among those who came to the debate, although whether they can actually vote for someone who makes fidelity pledges and speaks of the sanctity of marriage while rutting extramaritally we'll know tomorrow night.

All the more amusing is his repeated declarations that he'd sinned, but found forgiveness in his church through his priests under Christ. He simultaneously repeatedly refers to the wife who was his long-term adulterous mistress as a devout Catholic. One doubts this expresses the stated values of the typical South (by God) Carolina voter.

Of course, Roman Catholics aren't the only religious sorts who confess and receive group or individual absolution. There are substantial differences among the practices of Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic versions, as well as Anglican/Episcopal and some Protestant churches. Yet the gist is that whether you atone directly in prayer to your God or through a cleric personally, you are supposed get a clean slate and, as the New Testament cliché runs, go and sin no more.

Well, Gingrich is clearly very good at the getting forgiveness part. He does not have a solid history of the sinning no more follow-up though. Yet, pollsters among evangelicals have claimed in numerous results that Gingrich used his atonement superpower to great effect. At least for this campaign, he has done well with the I'm-a-changed-man routine.

As that same New Testament reads, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. He claims now to be an example for the religious instead of an admonition. Those gullible enough and eager to defeat the POTUS seem to respond favorably. (May the good Lord increase their insight immediately.)

Small bands of fierce roving ego-beasts rouse and terrify the populace for a year at a time every four years. Gingrich is a rouser. While hypocrisy in pols is common, the superpower to transform it to primal virtue is a wonder.

Tags: massmarrier, Gringrich, adultery, campaign, forgiveness, South Carolina

Bearding the Boston Lion

2012-01-19T10:25:00.000-05:00

Maybe the world, or at least Boston's City Hall, is mellowing. Our extremely popular, longest-serving-ever Mayor Tom Menino seems less prickly in recent years, even laughing at criticism...sometimes. City Council President Steve Murphy is lately even more amiable than usual, certainly due to his very recent engagement. (His re-elections to Council and gavel wielder can't hurt.)

Now though, I'll watch for steam and fire down on the Brutalist plaza.

Just Tuesday, the previously unthinkable happened — three Councilors skipped the Mayor's state-of-the-city address. They were taking a wee vacation at Murphy's Ft. Lauderdale condo. They had fair reasons/excuses, including that they had booked and paid for their trip when the speech was on the calendar for the previous week. Menino rejiggered it to avoid conflict with the NH POTUS primary.

Pic Note: That condo adapted from Google Maps with the overhead line brushed out.

The truth is in the old days no one would have dared that. Instead this time, the stage had 10 instead of 13 attendant chairs.

As a king watcher, I can't stop considering what the 2013 mayoral campaign will include. As well as being personally charming, Menino is politically canny, very canny. If he intends to run again, he won't tip his hand early. He'll let others fester and even show their cards.

Already, two long-distance runners have started, one actively racing and one seeming still stretching. TOUCH radio founder/personality Charles Clemons has not responded to my emails or requests to come on Left Ahead. However, after I asked a couple of times, he did change his Facebook page to feature a profile pic of his campaign poster.

It seems that Brother Charles as he likes folk to call him is in, kind of, and folk say that he sometimes hands out flyers reading that he's running. There's no platform or website or such brain-straining, time-consuming details, but we likely will hear from him sometime this year.

More definitively, Will Dorcena is all in and talking about it. I'm so intrigued at this that I did a three-parter on his announcement and platform. It starts here with links to the other posts.

Back to Murphy, he claims to be happy as President. Yet several Councilors have told me repeatedly over years that any of their body who says he or she is not interested in being Mayor is lying. I'll wait until Murphy says he's running to count him in the hunt.

I would love to see a real race. A caveat is that as much as the provincials in places like South Carolina and Boston love to brag about their political campaigns being blood sports and muddy as hell, I can do without the petty and personal we saw when Maura Hennigan ran against Menino in 2005.

However, we have big local issues like schools, transit, crime and more. Dorcena already has a pretty beefy platform with fairly specific planks for most of those. Whether Menino runs for re-election or not, such problem/solution sets could really elevate the dialog. The minority of voters who pay attention could get a real fix on the candidates' positions. Moreover, it would force Menino to sculpt and display his best takes on these issues — upping everyone's game to the benefit of the town.

We may have gotten a flavor of the possible Tuesday. There's an easy-to-digest, 5-page, single-spaced state-of-the-city address link at Dorchester News' LitDrop, Gintautas Dumcius' quick hit/analysis depot.

Understandably, the media focused on Menino's pledge, with timeline, to neighborhood schools. "I'm committing tonight," he said, "that one year from now Boston will have adopted a radically different student assignment plan — one that puts a priority on children attending schools closer to their homes. I am directing Superintendent Johnson to appoint a citywide group of dedicated individuals. They will help design the plan to get us there and engage the community in this transition."

Moreover, he also announced "a plan to transform Madison Park (Technical Vocational High School) into a top notch center for career development." Right now, only 11 students were in cooperative word programs. "We can then change the schedule and the curriculum so they allow for real work-based experiences. Second, we will create the Madison Park Business Partnership. I challenge Boston’s businesses and institutions to provide advice, jobs, and their own financial resources to help transform this school." He announced two business partners to start.

By the bye, such efforts are among those Dorcena included in his platform. That could be like-minded coincidence or a reaction. Regardless, it's good for the city.

Additionally, he promised to expand neighborhood crime watches. He pledged 100 new ones in 2012.

For health, he had a spongier goal, but it also came with a 2012 target. That would be the residents, apparently including him, to lose 1 million pounds in the year. That would only be about five ounces per, averaged over those chubby and scrawny alike, so make that 10 ounces. No one could measure that, but we're like to get the message in schools and otherwise.

Job creation was a weak point too. He made vague promises of new jobs as part of the casino proposal to East Boston. TBD and there's a needy city on this side of the tunnel.

That casino thingummy brings up Murphy again. Dumcius analyzes his recent appearance on Chris Lovett's show. On the one hand, Murphy seems to support Menino in restricting the vote to that ward on whether to allow a casino in East Boston. On the other, he implied that he can do better than the Mayor in dealing with the problem developer who left the huge Downtown Crossing hole where Filene's use to sit.

He said Menino was "rebuffed" in effort to get development downtown. In contrast, Murphy seems to want to make the developer fix one to get the other, and maybe even to play eager casino hopefuls off each other.

To me, that sounds like a candidate, if cautious and biding his time.

POTUS and our Senate races will surely dominate the rest of this year politically. Yet, a thread of the 2013 Mayoral contest will surely be ever visible. That's great stuff.

Tags: massmarrier, Menino, Murphy, Dorcena, Clemons, state of the city, Boston, mayor

Santorum as the Anti-Universalist

2012-01-16T08:24:00.000-05:00

Quite reasonably, James Carroll wants his religion back from Rick Santorum. That nasty pol has used Roman Catholicism as a weapon this electoral cycle. Despite the clumsiness and craziness (my terms) of those in the church hierarchy, American Catholics have consistently been forces of progressive and compassionate personal dealings and public beliefs.

Instead, Santorum has been inverting President John Kennedy's defense of his religion while pledging to keep his personal beliefs separate from public policy. As Carroll notes, Santorum's "achievement is in showing that a Roman Catholic can be as narrowly intolerant as the most puritanical of fundamentalists." That may work in appealing to the basest of GOP-inclined voters, particularly as progressive and liberal sorts do turn cheeks to tolerate such divisive hatred.

Santorum does not have the honor or Christian values to play fair. His putative religion is just another prop and another weapon.

One might suppose that a nation whose original white settlers came expecting religious freedom would even now demand that of anyone running to be their top leader. Cynics could note that many of the original colonialists only demanded such liberty for their own narrow flavor of religion. That may be true enough, but by the time we got through fine-tuning our Bill of Rights, we had the basic principals down.

It took a bunch of court decisions and state and national laws to flesh it out. Even today though, we aren't quite there. It took us nearly two centuries from our revolution to elect...and just barely...a Catholic President. That was quite an improvement from outright bans of Catholic settlers in colonies like Massachusetts, but wow, it took a long time to get there.

Even now, many Americans seem suspicious of Jews, Muslims and other non-Christian sorts. Agnostics or atheists might face even harder campaigns to be President.

Most of the current GOP scrum of POTUS candidates have been using religion like cudgels. Even the notorious ethically and fidelity challenged Newt Gingrich claims to know he's been forgiven, and uses his Catholicism as cover. Only Mormon Mitt Romney seems at all defensive and non-pious about his personal religion.

Without even getting into comparative religion, we can likely agree that the fundamental principles of Christianity should produce fine humans well suited for public service, as well as good neighbors. What kind of ambition and hubris and disingenuousness has led these candidates to misuse such good material?

Just in my last post here, I bemoaned that sort-of progressive POTUS Obama has muddled his religion, apparently for political expediency. He pretends his religion is a cover for his inaction on a key civil-rights issue.

We need more of the attitude of the late Peter Tosh. In You're An African, he sang to black folk to stop deriding each other's religion and to look at the commonalities:

No mind denomination That is only segregation You're an African
'Cause if you go to the Catholic And if you go to the Methodist And if you go to the Church of Gods You're an African

The Santorum types, basically the whole GOP field seem to forget the are supposed to be Americans.

New-Squeak and Dumb

2012-01-15T18:34:00.000-05:00

The pending Newsweek is flogging itself with the cover for Andrew Sullivan's article. My corollary is why does President Obama play so dumb so often?

Art note: This is an edited snippet from the cover, for which I claim fair use. The original title was WHY ARE OBAMA'S CRITICS SO DUMB?

That headline made me return to that similar question so central to this POTUS' administration. Who's he kidding and why?

Barack Obama is clearly smart. He's not Thomas Jefferson or Woodrow Wilson or Jimmy Carter smart, not even Bill Clinton smart, but he's intelligent and knowledgeable. Yet he jerks us around often.

Take same-sex marriage as an example that has run through his 2008 campaign and whole Presidency. With the nasty reality of Clinton's Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in place, this smart President has played the religion and tradition card at every deal.

He and his wife say again and again that their religion stated that marriage should be between one man and one woman. Sometimes he has said that it's been that way from the beginning of civilization.

Consider first that not only is he President but that he also is an attorney. Combined, those mean he certainly must understand the differences in personal religious belief and law. As an attorney, he also must know that his church's religious rituals are only coincidental to marriage. (He's also enough of an historian to know that marriage has been late to the human condition and that it has had many forms over the millennia, with the DOMA version only a very recently common one.)

The only reason a minister or other cleric can sign a marriage license is as an agent of the state, as it is with a justice of the peace, judge or anyone else empowered to solemnize. Legally, marriage is the contract between the couple and the government. If the couple wants to have a nonbinding nicety of a religious ritual on top of the legal component of the ceremony, fine, but that's something else entirely.

Cynics have stated firmly that he doesn't believe in DOMA and is almost certainly in favor of marriage equality. That would be in line with other civil rights beliefs he has expressed for decades. They would have it that he disingenuously is willing to let homosexual couples continue as second or third class citizens just to gain and then stay in office.

Early in his tenure, I also heard many self-identified progressives and liberals claim that when he got other big things done with the economy, got rid of don't-ask-don't-tell, and blah blah blah, he'd dump DOMA. Then it became as soon as he gets reelected, he'll claim he's seen the light and will demand DOMA's demise.

That's really not relevant anymore. He's shown he doesn't have the guts to buck Congress on big issues. He's also let his solid majorities there wither away. He didn't use the slight majority in the Senate the way George Bush the Lesser did. He surely won't try if the Republicans control both houses.

Here's a POTUS who let potential greatness drown in indecisiveness and playing dumb. When the situation called for decisiveness, he had none. When it called for intelligence, he kept most of his hidden. When it called for moral leadership, he turned reactionary.

Avarice on Trial

2012-01-12T07:23:00.000-05:00

Can we hold that the GOP attacks on Romney will make some media and political types pay attention? At the moment, self-serving POTUS candidates are piling on our own Cap'n Brylcreem, Mitt Romney. They brush off a little of the unction to see how he eviscerated companies and discarded employees.

That's well enough and easy to show. If MSM pay a little attention though, the big issue, that myth of the job creator, is right before them.

Simple-minded and literal wingers do have a good talent in spreading catchphrases like so many dandelion seeds — just blow. There's lifestyle to suggest that homosexuals choose their orientation and therefore deserve unequal laws and treatment. There's unborn children to claim that lumps of cells even before they can be called fetuses are people, hence abortion murder. Now the uber-wealthy who suck money from the system instead of expanding and investing are job creators.

The reality is dishearteningly the opposite. Moreover, there's dozens or more analyses, most of it in no way left-wing, proving just that. If you haven't paid attention or doubt it, do start with a left-leaning special that recaps the loony campaign to suggest otherwise. On top, head over the Natural Bureau of Economic Research and nose around, like the report on how small and medium business are not the big jobs engine the GOP loves to claim. (That one is close to my heart from when I worked at Inc. magazine and heard everyone from Bernie Goldhirsh to business owners to association execs play that card.)

If you have any doubt that wealthy individuals and companies are not expanding or otherwise helping the economy, do research. Try your favorite publications via the net or library. It's only the most partisan and dishonest winger groups that pretend otherwise. The numbers are all there that prove lower tax rates kill jobs and resulting increased profits leave the larger economy.

Instead, we as a nation should be calling the fouls. First of all, in this God-awful recession/stagnation caused by unregulated greed, the long-term lamprey eels attached to the national belly need to contribute.

Pretending that the richest individuals and companies earned their bags of money from hard work and superior brains is madness. They played a rigged game. More important, once they got their money, they did not create jobs, did not expand and certainly did not share in the national pain. As a set, companies big and small whined about tighter credit, even though that was a reasonable response to their abuses and, well, theft.

When it came time to step up and heal the economy, they retreated and sought the safest places to hide their money. That's crap!

Their duty now is to create jobs not simply say they are job creators. Risk capital, as in capitalism, instead of tending their money trees. Expand, hire, put money in circulation, give consumers something to spend, revivifying that cycle that represents how capitalism can actually be both profitable and patriotic.

For the government, get your act together on real tax incentives. Times when we had real growth, company owners and execs had reason to invest, to, as the phrase goes, create jobs. If they'd lose money to taxes when they do not reinvest it, what do you suppose they do? Ding, yes, they expand, a.k.a. create jobs.

As the tax rates and rules are now, the owners get their biggest rewards by investing overseas and hoarding money. Instead, if they grew their domestic businesses in lieu of paying income to taxes, they'd be ableboath to employee Americans and profit right here from consumers with cash in the wallet.

I promise I won't smirk if they then call themselves patriotic as well. Don't talk job creator when you mean parasite.

Let's call for looking deeper than one candidate's greed and lack of compassion. Job creators need to create jobs to earn the honor. Let the lazy media look.

Tags: massmarrier, job creator, myth, recession

Pope Continues Self-Marginalization

2012-01-10T08:37:00.001-05:00

Alas, poor Pope Benedict. We knew him too well.

Benny the Rat, the former Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, known in the religion biz as God's Rottweiler when he headed the Roman Inquisition for 25 years, has a favorite hobby horse. That would be same-sex marriage, his ride of choice.

There he sits, in a tiny country-like-space, surrounded by real, RC-dominated nations that have legalized marriage equality. The doctrinal infallible Pope told assembled diplomatic corps attached to the Vatican that same-sex marriage undermines "the nature of humanity itself."

The full context about marriage was:

This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself.

You'd think in 2012, he'd be smarter and more aware and more inclusive. However, blinded and deafened by dogma, one's faculties function badly.

As the world sees how SSM harms none, while being very pro-family and pro-marriage, the befuddled old school pronouncements are increasingly sad. The Pope calls in his darkness for discrimination promoting his views. He stops just short of lobbying for anti-marriage-equality laws with, "The family unit is fundamental for the educational process and for the development both of individuals and states; hence there is a need for policies which promote the family and aid social cohesion and dialogue."

He's certainly out of touch with history and reality. Then again, someone in his job should not be chasing trends. Yet, that position has also been for other Popes one that tried to help people instead of harming and hindering them.

There's been Popes, Popes and Popes. This one is nothing if not consistent.

Tags: massmarrier, Vatican, same-sex marriage, Pope

Arm's Length LGBT Support

2012-01-09T07:01:00.002-05:00

Tucked in an analysis of debate-like-object attacks on Willy Mitt Romney is a good recap of his avoidance of LGBT issues. In fact, in Salon's post, Steven Kornacki plays Romney's game of reducing that to gay.

Since promising in his 1994 run for U.S. Senate to do more for homosexuals than Ted Kennedy, Romney has done, "essentially nothing — at least since gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts and Romney turned his attention to the national GOP stage."

Instead, he has been trying to play Chex Party Mix, with flavors and textures for every taste. He's a one-man/one-woman marriage proponent, he says. He's for civil unions instead of same-sex marriage, he says.

Try not to think of the verb here as I note there's a rub. As Kornacki writes, "But given how close he is to winning the GOP nomination, Romney is now at risk of being positioned too far to the right on gay issues. Public attitudes on the subject are rapidly changing, producing some embarrassing moments for anti-gay Republican candidates."

We certainly can't assume Obama haters will be rational about what Romney says, does, adapts, backtracks, and evades. There is a prize to be had and it's neither honor nor honesty.

Tags: massmarrier, GOP, Romney, marriage equality, duplicity

Dorcena Door to Door to Door

2012-01-09T06:00:00.000-05:00

First, he got in real late and now real early. Will Dorcena was the last one in running for at-large Boston City Council last year but has not announced he's running for Mayor in the 2013 election.

Yet immediately when Dorcena's announcement was previewed, it began. The epithets were amateur, naive, hopeless, quixotic.

Pedestrian punditry, a.k.a. conventional wisdom, about Boston politics are a version of crickets on a summer night. The repetition and volume drown out all else.

For a recent example, nearly all writers and talking heads chirped in unison about the City Council at-large race just past. The newbies, Felix Arroyo and particularly Ayanna Pressley were underfunded and vulnerable. Michael Flaherty would push at least one of them out of the chamber. Of course, Pressley topped the returns and Arroyo was second. Flaherty was an also-ran.

Politically inured Bostonians are already expressing weary doubts. At the least, what I've heard is that there is a sort of hazing process whereby you run for local office two or three times before you have a chance to win it.

That hasn't happened in memory for Mayor, but certainly at the Council level it has. Think immediately of twinkly-eyed Matt O'Malley's comet-like appearance to take the special election for John Tobin's vacant seat. Of course, even though he was a political young'un, he had been aide or campaign worker for numerous elected officials. He got a pass on the two-or-three-times guideline.

Why should anyone care, you might well ask. The local papers largely ignored his announcement yesterday as they only begrudgingly covered him in passing during the at-large contest. They won't care unless he proves himself a real threat with contributions and crowds.

First, Dorcena does have a shot, particularly if the incumbent does not want another year of campaigning and four more of service. While we can all think of several Councilors who'd announce in such circumstances, Dorcena would have a well-established double message by then. He has a real vision with platform and he had the guts to step up while the others hid in their lairs until the big bear was hibernating.

Breaking Ranks

Dorcena also faces that double-sided support issue — money and endorsements. For the latter, it will be a hard sell to get other pols, like Councilors or legislators, to praise him. Not only is Menino a singularly powerful incumbent, but should he choose not to run, a couple of Councilors, each with body buddies, would go for the open office. Likewise, wealthy individual, corporate and organization donors would think one, two or ten times before crossing Menino.

In terms of state-level pols, he doesn't have any champions or mentors in the Administrator or legislature. In fact, neither he nor his sister, Rep. Linda Dorcea Forry, talk about their estrangement. That also counts out his newspaper editor (Boston Haitian Reporter and Dorchester News) brother-in-law, Bill Forry. Stranger events have occurred than a rapprochement between siblings, but in lieu of that, this is another area where Dorcena is at a disadvantage at the moment.

He admits his campaign will not be easy, but has terrific, almost contagious faith, in grassroots persuasion and fund-raising. In this words:

If I get to enough residents in the city and speak to them and tell them what I represent what I stand for and I intend to make decisions every day that's in the best interest of them and their families, I'll win. I just need to put in the work.

He also admits that he'd need to raise several times the money as he did in the short campaign for Council, but said, "This campaign isn't going to be about the contributions." Instead, "We're going to win this race by taking it directly to the people, taking the message to the people, street by street, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood." Well, that worked for now MA Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz.

In his high-minded opening statement this week, Dorcena said, "For the next two years, I'll walk the streets, avenues and boulevards of our neighborhoods to make the case for new leadership, bold ideas, innovative solutions to our problems and most important to bring residents into the conversation and decision-making process."

Cynics can note the high percentage of residents who don't bother to vote, don't attend public meetings, and won't look at available issue papers. Yet, Dorcena believes he can't get enough interest to succeed. As he put the overall aim, "My campaign in not about Tom Menino. My campaign is about the city of Boston and the direction this city needs to move in."

Moreover when asked if he had two plans, one for if Menino decides not to run, he said, "I have one strategy and that strategy is to take a positive message of truth, of honesty, of speaking directly to the people to address these issues, not sugar coating some of the difficult discussions that need to be had and having it directly with the residents of this city across all the neighborhoods.

On the other hand, he was upfront about his door-to-door plan. "The Mayor has been her for 20 years," he said, "and he doesn't have to knock on many doors for people to know who he is, but someone like me has to."

Framing the Contest

The intriguing question comes about whether sustained candidacy of one or more mayoral aspirants this early will set the tone for the 2013 election. Can Dorcena's door knocking and other campaigning force the topics?

We won't know until it's clear whether the Mayor will run in 2013 who else is will be in for the job. Allegedly Clemons is running, but not only is there no evidence except for his saying so once and occasionally handing out flyers. Moreover, he has not advanced any platform or stated any positions.

With four times as long to campaign as he had for the Council race, Dorcena might get some traction and influence the dialog. He certainly was not for the at-large race. He noted that he and Sean Ryan did not get the coverage that the incumbents and Flaherty did. Call that whining if you like, but that was accurate.

His recent announcement likewise did not have the bodies or column inches or airtime it deserved. In contrast, the Globe and other local media made much of the non-announcement of Joseph P. Kennedy III. The virtually unknown dynast did have minions set up an exploratory committee for Barney Frank's U.S. House seat, but no announcement or promises or platform. It's a honking-in-the-background maybe.

A couple days after the Dorcena event, the Herald did run the basics...in one of its blogs. This included the homey posed shot of him and his very pregnant wife Eby flanking the Haitian/U.S. flags colored campaign sign. The post did not get into his platform but at least covered his promise to go street to street relentlessly.

You'd think that the Globe, local TV and the Phoenix at least would have attended the press conference and run the basic. A few, like Dorchester News' Gintautas Dumcius have previously noted the poor political coverage of some candidates, including Dorcena. This time, if nothing else, they could feign pundit sophistication with Council-loser-dreams-of-Mayor sneering. Then again, they are often cowardly pack animals who hold back until others decide a candidate is worth profiling or quoting.

I am interested in following Dorcena's campaign. Specifically:

Will his platform frame the issues of the next campaign?
Will he maintain the energy for tens of thousands of visits?
Will residents agree with his problems/solutions message?
Will plain folk contribute enough to keep his campaign viable?
What will he have to do to get media attention?

In the next two years, they will see the work. They will see how hard I work.

Series Note: This ended up taking on its own life. I attended Dorcena's announcement. The second post was on his platform. I am intrigued about whether this early candidacy raises interest and money, and whether it colors the entire election.

Tags: massmarrier, Will Dorcena, Boston, mayor

Dorcena Answers Why Him

2012-01-06T17:51:00.000-05:00

Will Dorcena will have to sustain his energy, commitment, focus and voice for nearly two years non-stop. He must perfect a quick, powerful, memorable, convincing front-stoop speech to let him get 20 or more households a day to 1) listen to him, 2) believe his platform is better, and 3) think he has a shot at winning. In addition to running his business while supporting wife and two kids, he'll have to find the time to woo donors who are not afraid to be associated with a would-be usurper.

Dorcena does not attack Menino or the administration by claiming sins and crimes. He makes a much harder pitch of missed opportunities, lazy management, lack of vision, and misplaced priorities. The immediately compelling drama of accusations of graft, nepotism and such are much easier sells than appeals to honest accounting. Moreover, he counts on voters to want to understand were the city's money comes from and where it goes. He also expects them to vote.

He does have a worthy personal tale — Haitian American from a rough part of Boston, who stayed away from street trouble, got a bachelors from BC and masters from Babson, started his successful business, and had loads of volunteer work and civic involvement. He's believable when he says, "We know what the problems are," and "When I was 9, I knew who the bad guys were."

In systemic terms, he says the city administration is not "doing the work."

Direct Challenges

While Dorcena is personally positive, he has an edge that may cut Menino. Foremost is a reflection of another side of Dorcena's personality — from his own experience and observations, he's very much an up-by-the-bootstraps guy. He expects the youth and others he's mentored to follow his hard work and firm morals example. Thus, one of his campaign refrains is "They haven't done the work!"

Short of accusing him of a felony, few statements should rile Menino as much. He knows he is hard working, but of course, Dorcena's point is that the important work is not political per se but that which produces those results of better schools, lower unemployment and less crime.

I've never seen a politician, even Bill Clinton, who enjoys politics as much as Tom Menino. For a couple of small examples outside City Hall. At his annual street parties on July 12th, the anniversary of his taking office when Ray Flynn left, he stands for hours in the middle of Chesterfield Street greeting all comers. There are thousands who come to praise him, as well as get free hot dogs and ice cream cones. He knows and chats up nearly everyone. He answers any questions, political or personal. He is indefatigable. Likewise, at the sub-neighborhood citizens' meetings around May, he grips and quips with all. Typically, he personally hands out pots of marigolds and other window box flowers. In one I attended in Readville, I think he knew every single person in his large neighborhood. He greeted all by name and asked about other family members by name. He clearly loved every second of it. That's a lot of work.

Yet, Dorcena started contrasting himself with City Hall when he ran for Councilor. He made it plain then as now that he thinks he:

Works harder than anyone else
Works on the right goals
Will doggedly do whatever it takes to get it done

He also is huge on open government, particular fiscal transparency. Perhaps befitting his MBA, he stresses money and how it relates to priorities and accomplishments. For example, when asked at his announcement whether the city money was going to the right places, he said, "Before I can even answer the question of whether money is short (in a given area), we need an accounting of where it goes, who's getting it. You can live and die by that and you can make better decisions."

He pledges smarter use of resources, but always starting with measurements, how the money is spent compared with previous years. Then he seemed to channel MA Treasurer Steve Grossman, promising the city's checkbook online, and not just salaries. He acknowledged, "It's going to make a lot of people uncomfortable when you get to see where every penny is going, but be uncomfortable. I'm OK with that."

That may be a good sell, if presented right. Honestly, politicians like the concept of transparency as a campaign issue better than the public. It's well enough to say everything will be open to view. Getting residents to do that viewing and analysis is harder than getting them to the polls. You could hand a voter a printout of say, 300 pages of the Boston schools budget, including the hidden 30%, and a few in 100 might even open the report.

"Only real transparency will wake up the electorate," said Dorcena. "So they can know exactly what your elected officials and what your government is doing with your money." Of course, it may well be enough if more data are available, more public discussion takes place, and an involved subset of residents participates.

Hands-On Pledge

His accounting/management nerdiness aside, he has good stories and clear problem definitions. He puts his messages in understandable terms as well.

He has a plan for dealing with the perennial problem of locals not getting the many construction jobs here, for example. "We have a Boston jobs policy but it's not really followed to the tee," he said. He would work with unions to help them recruit directly from the neighborhoods, as well as with the unemployed to get them to apply for union membership and be ready for the openings.

For education, as many pols, he decries that Boston has so many important universities, schools local high-school grads are not equipped to enter or succeed in. As he put it, "A kid who lives in Mission Hill can walk to Northeastern, but he can't get in and his brother can't get in and his sister can't get in. It's not right and it has to change and if I'm the mayor of Boston, it will."

As far as fixing that, some of the solutions will be seeing where the money comes from, where it goes, and how it can be spent to maximum efficiency. The other part is a veiled slam at the current and past City Hall administrations. Back to his central theme, he said on education, "The reason we're not seeing the results is that the work isn't being done."

His pledge here is similar to what it is in policing and other city functions. While he's a union supporter who in turn had the Boston Teachers Union endorsement in his last race, he believes the Mayor needs to be hands on in key areas.

As he put it for schools, "These are some important fights that need to be had with the Boston Teachers Union on behalf of the kids." He said mayors and councilors typically get in office only to step back to avoid fighting with the unions. He claimed that in contrast, "If the decision is being made on behalf of the kids, I'll fight all day. That will piss a lot of people off, but that' s OK, because it's a fight worth fighting for."

Likewise, at his announcement, he waxed philosophic about the ephemeral nature of life. "While I'm here I've got to do everything I can to make make sure that the right decisions are being made on behalf, for the future of the city. And that if that means leaving the fifth floor to go and meet directly with the president of the Boston Teachers Union, the president of the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association, meeting directly with a City Council member in the district of Jamaica Plain, I will do that."

He contrasted himself with typical pols in his belief that it would be his duty to manifest his vision. More rhetorically, he said, "Enough words. Enough gamesmanship...Speeches are great. Words are nice, but at the end of the day, it's the work."

He also has terrific faith in the public to be interested in both the concepts and details, interested enough to participate. He key idea here is that if people have an understanding of and say in big things, that comes with buy-in.

He used expanded gambling as an example. That was also as close as he has gotten in directly attacking Menino. He said, "I know the Mayor is whole hog, 100MPH pushing for the casino to go into East Boston. That's something I intend to fight every day in this campaign."

His posture returns to the theme of involving the public, revealing the particulars of an issue, and going to widespread discussion and buy-in. While seeming to be the essence of democracy, that is also tricky. It relies on residents being willing to learn about an issue and discuss it. All too often here as elsewhere, the same few whiners, nitpickers, loudmouths and the occasional visionary attend public meetings to listen and speak.

He firmly believes that a casino or slot parlor in any Boston neighborhood would deeply affect the whole city. Thus, all the citizens need to know the particulars of any proposal. Yet, he also admitted that even after a discussion, that the decision might be the same as the Suffolk Downs options favored by the Mayor. That would be OK with Dorcena, who said that if that was supported by the majority after a full discussion, "Then its chances of success will be that much greater."

Another area where he faults the administration is not doing enough to get poor kids off the streets and into colleges or careers. Among his plans were he elected would be to replicate the Summer of Opportunity program he worked with at John Hancock. It would pick 40 to 50 at-risk kids identified from the gang unit, train and mentor them, get them jobs in fields they want and have abilities in, and as he put it, "help them see that the world is bigger than their immediate block."

Here he notes that we have many strong companies in Boston that receive tax breaks and other city benefits. He said that the right leader in the Mayor's office could expand that type of program.

Spending Smart

His key example set for money not spent smartly has been the troubled trio of Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan. These neighborhoods always seem to have lowest-achieving schools, the most dangerous streets, and the highest unemployment levels.

Yet as he started his campaign announcement with, "There's a serious push to close community centers, close libraries and close schools. Crime and violence are prominent in our neighborhoods to the point where it's the norm. And many decision continue to be made without public scrutiny or participation. We need a strong leader in Boston who will fight for the people of this city and fight for these decisions that are in the best interest of us as a collective and not just a few."

He cited the" musical-chairs" efforts to shuffle school around. In fact, he said in general the School Committee decisions can harm more than help children and parents.

He would eliminate the appointed School Committee, replacing it with an elected one, or perhaps a hybrid with a few appointed slots to ensure that a few educational experts were on the board.

He would further limit the office of mayor with term limits. From Mayor through Congress he believes, "We'd get better government, we'd get more honest elected officials if we had term limits," he said, adding that if you are in office 15 or 20 years, "you become the seat."

He said, "Two terms is plenty for the office of mayor. Two terms and I'm walking out of there. I don't even need you to swing the foot for the boot."

Series Note: This ended up taking on its own life. I attended Dorcena's announcement. There is this post on his platform and there will be another on how he sees his campaign. I am intrigued about whether this early candidacy raises interest and money, and whether it colors the entire election.

Tags: massmarrier, Will Dorcena, Boston, mayor

Will of 10,000 Doors

2012-01-05T16:43:00.003-05:00

The next knock you hear may be Will Dorcena. He's talking of going to tens of thousands of Boston doors in the next 600 plus days. He's announced his run for Boston Mayor in the 2013 election.

In case you've forgotten two months ago, he came in sixth on a ballot of seven for the four at-large Boston City Council slots. It was his first run for public office and he even got in late. His 8,739 votes were about a third to a quarter of those of the four incumbents who were re-elected.

Assuming our longest-serving Mayor ever, Thomas Menino, in his fifth four-year term, runs again, the big question from the outside is what chance could Dorcena have? Let us pause to replay Cassius' words in another Will's Julius Caesar:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

Like a Colossus, and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs and peep about

To find ourselves dishonourable graves.

Not only is this Will not in that mood, but he also said he'd run the same campaign whether Menino is in or not. He said at his announcement this morning at the Reggie Lewis Center that he won't have the money or GOTV machine that the Mayor has, but he intends to win by connecting with voters on doorsteps and in living rooms one-to-one, one at a time.

That certainly has worked in various times and places. Locally though, recent visit-'em-all types Doug Bennett and Sean Ryan fared poorly in Council races. Those with big organizations and healthy bank accounts beat them.

I'll do a future post on Dorcena's positions in detail. He joined us on Left Ahead last year. He covered much of the same ground, many of the same topics. Today, he was consistent in the issues he stressed and his solutions to our problems in that show. These also appear on his Council campaign site. Problem/solution statements that seemed overly ambitious for a Councilor make much more sense in a mayoral context.

His Facebook page is already converted to his new candidacy. His eponymous website surely will soon.

The punchlines include:

Will Dorcena is in for Mayor for 2013
He intends to win on shoe-leather, retail campaigning
He promises 10,000 or more visited in all 22 precincts in a little over 600 days
He wants an elected school committee (or a hybrid if that will guarantee ed experts)
He pledges two terms and out — he believes in term limits for Mayor
He wants all city expenses public, including the quarter billion school budget portion currently hidden
He says we can't even know how much money we have or how to deploy it without full, open accounting
He wants all major decisions, like casino siting, fully open to public view and comments

He's sure to rile Menino with his evaluation of the state of the city, including:

There's a serious push to close community centers, close libraries and close schools. Crime and violence are prominent in our neighborhoods to the point where it's the norm. And many decisions continue to be made without public scrutiny or participation.
We need a strong leader in Boston, who will fight for the people of this city and fight for these decisions that are in our best interest as a collective and not jut the few.

In a future post, I'll break down his positions a bit more and quote more from his announcement. It'll also be time to ask him back on Left Ahead in his new role.

By the bye, there may or may not be a previously announced 2013 mayoral candidate. In August at his 50th birthday party, entrepreneur and TOUCH radio co-founder Charles Clemons said he'd be in the race. I can't find any evidence of a campaign in print or online material and sites beyond the initial DOTNEWS coverage.

Series Note: This ended up taking on its own life. The second post was on his platform. The third is on his campaign strategy. I am intrigued about whether this early candidacy raises interest and money, and whether it colors the entire election.

Tags: massmarrier, Will Dorcena, Boston, mayor

Sudden POTUS Confidence

2012-01-05T08:08:00.000-05:00

That Obama guy, to put it crassly, looked down to find some 'nads. He used recess appointments to empower two essential parts of government. GOPers had long ignored both laws passed by Congress and the clear will of Americans in refusing to appoint enough members of the National Labor Relations board for a quorum or a head to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau so it could function at all.

In a most pleasant surprise, the POTUS fixed both. May this presage more courageous, rational actions!

The vid below is from the Maddow show, replete with Administration guest to detail the actions.

Tags: massmarrier, Obama, recess appointments, CFPB

Dorcena and Da Mare

2012-01-04T17:38:00.000-05:00

Where's our BULLETIN...BULLETIN... flash?

Will Dorcena will announce his candidacy for Boston mayoralty tomorrow (TH 1/5) at 11 AM at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center in Roxbury Crossing.

He was coy when we chatted over coffee last week, but he did say stay tuned.

He recently ran for an at-large City Council seat, his first political go. I returned his yard sign and added it to the neat stacks on his porch. I'll be intrigued to see how he reworks them to make his happy face work for a mayoral run.

We did talk with him in June about his Council candidacy. That gives a sense of his hopes for Boston and his vitality. Listen to that show here.

He said when he called that he'll work hard for 21 months for the job. That's easy to believe.

I'll be down there tomorrow to see what he promises and to report back. Honestly, competition this early, this enthusiastic, can only increase the dialog and fun.

Tags: massmarrier, Will Dorcena, Council, mayor

Warren Keeps Getting Sharper

2012-01-04T09:43:00.000-05:00

For such a thin woman, Elizabeth Warren's handshake is astonishingly strong. It matches her intense gaze, focused attention and full, clear responses to each person — a.k.a. voter — she touches. She couples her sincerity and energy to vast knowledge and analysis.There's no political or economic question you could ask that she hasn't already considered.

Last evening at Florian Hall, I saw and heard her engage about 300 as a group and then one at a time. She owned the room every second.

Disclaimer: At Left Ahead, several candidates for the U.S. Senate seat up in 2012 joined us. That includes two still in the race, Marisa Defranco and Warren. We found the former powerful and with a strong platform, and were even more impressed with the latter.

I've heard and seen Warren personally a few times since last summer, before she officially announced. Of course, she's also been on talk shows as well as in media interviews. I went last night to catch the evolution of her stump speech and how she worked a larger group. Afterward, we chatted just a minute. When I complimented her on the advances in her presentation, she gave that winning little grin and said, "Yup. I've been working on it."

She's gone far beyond the too-often-repeated phrases like growing up "on the ragged edge of the middle class." She's ready to bring values campaigning to a contest and national conscience where values has been a code word for excluding, hindering and harming other Americans.

Click the under-2-minute clip below to hear her wrap-up last evening. The previous hour had detail and background, but here she rouses the crowd with vision of both a past and future America. Her values include opportunity for all and clear steps how to make that happen. As she put it, "What kind of people are we and what kind of future are we going to build?...This is our moment in history!"

Listening to her, I noticed the obvious, that she won't have to lie or generalize. Unfortunately for Sen. Scott Brown, in his two years since winning the special election, he has not advanced laws to help our troubled nation. In a clear record, he voted down all three jobs bills to protect the tax breaks for those making over $1 million a year. Moreover, in interviews and public appearances, he is wont to say he isn't sure about this or that.

Head to head, there'd be no competition. I'd bet that she has 30 IQ points on him, carries a huge bag of knowledge, and is plain about both the problems and the solutions for what ails America.

Yet in this first real test in a post-Citizens United world, we know the mailboxes, email boxes, doorknobs, and most of all airwaves and cable will drip with political venom. It's highly likely she'll be the Dem to run in November. There's certainty that her supporters will do nasty work in revealing Brown's record, and no doubt that the other side will be far worse. I guess that the Brown side will have five to ten times as many millions to attack her. I don't have to guess from what we've seen already that his supporters won't bother with truth or anything verifiable. Theirs will be emotion, particularly fear based, lowest-common-denominator spots.

The best news for her side has two plies. She's tough, can take the attacks, and will call out the lies. Also, she has a clear platform of short-term and long-range goals, with the ways to achieve them. Brown? No, nothing. The cliché is that attack ads work, but it's also true they don't always decide the result.

Refined Roughness

Warren's also been working on presenting her personal story. Brown can stretch and fake his upbringing (absentee executive dad, Tufts's education, and very brief money troubles for his divorced mom). Warren has real experiences that most of America, far less privileged than Brown, can relate to personally.

Her mother answered phones at Sears when her maintenance-crew dad had a disabling heart attack. She worked as a baby sitter at 9, waitress at 13, and earned her way through public university for teaching and law degrees — with a kid, her own divorce, and a remarriage. She and her hubby teach at Harvard Law, but as she put it, she "scratched my way" there.

She also has compelling sibling tales of one brother who had 288 Vietnam combat missions, another who has been a serial entrepreneur (whom Republicans would call a "job creator" except he actually did that).

She has actual struggles overcome. She can even note that she literally hung out her attorney's shingle in front of her house when she passed the bar, nine months pregnant and thus unemployable. She kept the shingle to remind her of what determination can bring.

So, from the listening tours in the living rooms of MA, she's watched and heard what voters care about. As she put it last night when she started out personal, "I think you have the right to know the heart of anyone who's going to represent you."

Past and Future

Warren has the other personal advantage of being a boomer. She grew up when the positive effects of economic reforms and laws made for the commonweal were still strong. She could work her way through public college and earn out her loans by teaching, for example.

She does not gloss over that period either. She says that women, blacks, Latinos and others were not yet welcome in many places and to many jobs. She notes that nation had laid the track with white men that then led to opening up more education and employment opportunity for all...until the terrible lawmaking from the 1980s that nibbled and chomped away at the post-Depression stability.

Refreshingly, she speaks of the related values. She wants us to stop subsidizing "those who have already made it," and instead invest in education, jobs and infrastructure. She provided a list of specific investments that would support those, thus bring back the ideal of an America of opportunity for all that she grew up knowing.

I have no doubt that in debates, or those dreadful debate-like-objects known as forums, she'd skunk Brown. She has specific proposals for clear aims. She accomplished more in her appointed position that led to the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau than Brown has in his entire MA and U.S. Senatorial career.

Yet debates won't be the only factors in this election. Attack-ad weight will surely go to Brown, but she's smarter, more credible and far more humane than he and will win the personal appearances. Fortunately for her, she had only the commonwealth and not the whole nation to cover for this one. She also has an amazing level of energy.

It's possible that MA voters will go with the incumbent, fearing change and fantasizing that the always failing GOP economics lies really will work this time. I wouldn't bet on it. She's hot stuff.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, Congress, U.S. Senate

Warren Working DOT

2012-01-03T20:37:00.000-05:00

Have no doubt, Elizabeth Warren is no mousy professor. She owned Florian Hall in Dorchester tonight. Maybe 300 were there for a stump speech and Q&A. One 3-year-old climbing all over her mother made her little coughs. Otherwise the room was quiet...except when they applauded vigorously.

I'll give a full report tomorrow, replete with a sound clip or two after I edit the digital recording. The short of it is that she's getting better by the week.

Afterward, I did hang around, eavesdropping on her answers to the many who had to, as the expression goes, touch the hem of her garment. She did turn to me and I found myself trying to apologize for causing her trouble when she and I bantered about being labeled hicks up here in Yankeeland, after her 17 and my 32 years here.

She'd have none of it and dismissed the lame GOP effort to latch onto that. Oddly though, she'd remembered that I didn't have yellow glasses the last time we met face to face. Moreover, when I told her that her message was fuller and more fleshed out, she grinned and said, "Yup. I've been working on it."

It showed. She had been dynamic in the early version in August on her pre-announcement listening tour. She's even better now.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, Congress, U.S. Senate

Yes, Virginia, There Is An Occupy

2012-01-01T11:15:00.002-05:00

Mirabile dictu! Shortly before the Grand Procession of Boston’s First Night (for God’s sake, don’t dare use the term loosely; they sue), the Parish Café had a couple of bar stools on the street side open. My wife and I grabbed two and got to see the parade perfectly, above the crowd and with drinks in hand.

My Flickr feed has some so-so snaps of the afternoon.

Of greater interest and a pleasant surprise to us was the Occupy Boston presence. They were well dispersed, as in the Common, Copley and more. They handed out 99% buttons, flyers, and conversation. In the Common, a little wagon symbolized the Occupy tents…and the mobility of the movement.

A good counterpoint to the crazed reactionary response to OWS and localized ones appears in the currentPhoenix. Chris Faraone writes starkly and in detail about the evolution of Occupy and of the many proofs that the fantasy and hope that this is a leaderless, pointless, non-movement that is dead already are loopy. Dream on 1% and media.

As anyone who’s paid any attention or gone downtown in Manhattan, Boston or elsewhere would have predicted, the Occupy folk were cool about it all. They know absolutely that they have altered the political dialog. That’s not a mist about to dissolve.

Cross-post: This appeared at Harrumph.

Tags: massmarrier, Boston, First Night, Occupy

Life's Not Fair, Scotto

2011-12-29T07:09:00.000-05:00

Let me get this right, Sen. Scott Brown actually has a highly developed, differentiating skill — whining!

He wants us to know:

It's unfair for Elizabeth Warren to raise campaign funds
It's unfair for reporters and columnists to praise her reasoned arguments

As Uncle Scar told young Simba in the Lion King, "Life's not fair now, is it?"

Here you have it. If you ever felt tempted to say all politicians are the same, think on Brown. The obvious difference across the left and right wings is plain enough. Modern right wingers act with FoxNews-level ethics. What's fair for them is forbidden for lefties.

At its most absurd, think of fund raising. A couple of months ago, when Elizabeth Warren was announcing that she'd run, she was rewarded with a quick $3 million plus set of contributions. Brown with over a year and a half in office had over $10 million in hand. Yet he cried foul.

Like Eddie Haskell in Leave It To Beaver or a current version, say Bill O'Reilly, Brown wants the edge only on his side. His campaign even tried to depict him as being bullied and ganged up on by out-of-state contributors and special interest funds. This came despite the huge support he got and gets from right-ring PACs and financial-industry big shots. He votes on regulating his major contributors, but how unfair if she gets support from any organized group or wealthy contributor.

Today in dueling vignettes, the Globe and Herald run variations on his puerile and illogical whining. Itty-boo, Scotty me lad.

In the Herald, it's a Palin-style screed that the media are all against him and all for her. He can't get an honest article and he gets all the tough questions. I guess he doesn't read or listen to the media.

Of course, all but the delusional and unread know the lies there. He got a free ride in his campaign and for over a year afterward. Even the allegedly left leaning (I snort at that winger distortion where non-GOP-worshiping neutral becomes biased) media gave him great latitude and lauded his promis endlessly. When he blew that through repeated duplicity, grandstanding, and overly plain efforts to hurt all but the wealthiest Americans, he began to get overdue criticism. Well, boo hoo, boo hoo.

Moreover, from the moment Warren began her exploratory meetings with voters, she'd gotten razzed, hassled and grilled non-stop from all media. Now many of us lefty bloggers respect her positions and like her personally, but she's gotten the hairy eyeball and pointy, probing fingers of examination far, far more than that Brown character.

Then at the Globe, he's even more absurd. He stands on top of his mountain and screams that he's the real underdog. Honest to Cornelius Vanderbilt, we'd have to be totally daft to believe that.

Brown has floods of wealthy GOP types eager to keep their thumb in the eye of Massachusetts and the memory of the Kennedys by electing Brown to a full term. He already has over $15 million now in the bank. There's no doubt that his side and those supporting it surreptitiously through super-PACs will outspend Warren's backers many, many times. Underdog, my double wings!

Alas for the self-declared victim Brown, he'll have to do with ideas and proposals in this race. Warren will bring it. Coupled with his disgraceful voting record and total lack of initiatives to help us out of our terrible times, his lie mechanisms will be spinning to the melting point.

No, wee Scotty, you are no underdog, you have not gotten roughed up by the media, and you deserve no one's sympathy. Unlike the clumsy campaigner Coakley who handed you an easy victory in the special election, Warren will make you earn this post in 2012.

Without an intellectual and ethical double transplant, you're in trouble.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senate, Scott Brown

Whose Voice Is That?

2011-12-23T08:39:00.004-05:00

Using clogged traffic time on the way home Wednesday afternoon, I punched up WBUR for All Things Considered. I briefly heard myself bantering with Elizabeth Warren in a Tovia Smith segment, Mass. Senate Race a Battle Over Who's More Populist.

At the bottom here is an audio snippet (requires flash) of Smith taking an audio snippet from an October Left Ahead show with Elizabeth Warren. The now infamous elite-hick/hicks-for-Elizabeth banter occurred at the start of where she came into the 40 minute program. She made other remarks about populism, not only from her own upbringing, but in historic, economic and political American context.

An audio of Tovia Smith using an audio of Left Ahead using an audio of Elizabeth Warren on an audio of the show on BlogTalkRadio. How recursive can we get? Perhaps Left Ahead needs to introduce an edited audio of Smith using our edited audio. I'll settle on the snippet below to give context.

Indeed, that was what came to me as I listened to myself. When I worked newspapers and magazines and the few times I've been on TV or radio, I fell into my J-school training attribution. I'd say whom I was quoting or citing. If there were a book or other checkable reference, it went there too. Of course in modern times, I insert links as I do here. This takes negligible time and space, and mean a lot to the audience.

Some readers and listeners want to know more. Others are cynical or distrusting. Both types want to see for themselves. Even if a majority of your consumers are passive, be respectful to the group with curiosity, time and emotional or intellectual needs.

In my NPR experiences, they don't, at least with such bottom feeders as bloggers and podcasters. I am not sure whether they consider us some level of competition or merely unworthy of professionalism and respect.

Similarly, a few year ago, a BBC reporter did a brief phone interview with me on companies blocking blogging during work hours. She cited me by location and name, but not by my blog's URL. This time, Smith's coverage reduced me to "a fellow Oklahoman, who was interviewing her."

Setting aside vanity, I think as an NPR listener and as well as online and print newshound, I would have found it useful to know:

That the interviewer was local to Massachusetts, where the race is
The context and vehicle of the interview, in this case that it was an internet show, a podcast
The name of the show and URL, at least leftahead.com
The name of the interviewer

Amusingly enough, her disdain would not prevent the curious from ID'ing the site and interviewer. This two-month old story was widely covered in local and national news, online, cable and print. Most reports identified both Left Ahead and me, and many linked to the podcast.

Breeding is free

Including the omphaloskepsis, we at LA deserve the same courtesy we provide sources. I'm sure Tovia Smith, WBUR and NPR expect and likely demand citations for their work. As well as considerate of their readers, doing so would be professional as well-mannered. Breeding is free, but not spontaneous.

Come to pay closer attention though, the most recent WBUR quotes from me before this were only a little better cited. When Bianca Vázquez Toness used me to stir the pot under Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, she named me, but neither this blog nor LA. Of course she was highly selective in what she used; she had called me to extract one criticism I had already written. Having been a reporter, I understood that and won't even consider an out-of-context claim. She was hunting for a specific beast and brought it down with a clean shot.

Unlike Toness, Smith is not ahead of the news. She appears from a scan of her stories with their timing, to follow the elephants on the parade route, gathering up after them. While I prefer fresher reportage, I can see the drive to vary existing work. In that piece comparing Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren's plain-folk campaigning, She walked a very deep path. An internet search would show how rutted it is.

Oddly though, there seems to be bias against Warren. For example, she repeated the misinformation about "In his green pickup truck and worn-out barn coat, Brown stresses his hard-knocks upbringing raised by a single mom on and off welfare." She must have read or heard that elsewhere. At this stage in coverage of such an old story, here piece would have served readers better noting that Brown did not wear that expensive jacket until he wanted it as a campaign prop and that his truck was for carrying hay, tack and the sort for his daughter's horse. Neither is exactly behavior of plain folk.

Likewise, he slams the woman who worked her way from nothing to become a Harvard Law professor by saying he didn't go to Harvard. Smith could well note how much better off his family was come college time and that he went to Tufts, in the same price range and with a similar cachet to Harvard.

Instead, it was an old story, told with no new information or analysis. Yet, for those who hadn't paid attention, or read or heard it yet, it was OK.

When I realized that she had dissed us at LA, I did try newsjacking by thanking her on the NPR and BUR post. Of course, I included what she did not, a link to the whole 40-minute show, for listeners who might want to think for themselves. I logged in with a real name, likewise for those who like to vet.

BUR's post left the comment. NPR moderated it out, leaving instead a message saying it violated discussion rules. My comment was simply informative and not in the obscene, insulting or other classes. The only thing they could mean was the rule:

Feel free to share your ideas and experiences about religion, politics and relevant products or services you've discovered.But this is not a place for advertising, promotion, recruiting, campaigning, lobbying, soliciting or proselytizing. We understand that there can be a fine line between discussing and campaigning; please use your best judgment -- and we will use ours.

So my whine is that it's one-way. They would expect, but not give, attribution. I didn't have a choice on this one, where Smith simply snatched my audio without asking, much less citing. Next time one of their reporters calls to use me though, I'll demand professional citation. It appears they need to be reminded.

Tags: massmarrier, Left Ahead, news, attibution, Tovia Smith, media, Scott Brown, WBUR, Scott Brown, Toness, Elizabeth Warren

When News is Old

2011-12-22T10:17:00.000-05:00

It's not easy being fresh. Newspaper columnists, reporters of all media, and of course, preachers have a rough time producing original material.

Some media sort gave up a long time ago. The agony aunts and uncles among them take leads from readers and chums on a sad personal tale. Talking heads on TV and radio have it easy — writers print out stuff they read off paper or prompters.

If you want to see and hear to good stuff, hot, fresh and innovative, head over to Chris Lovett's shop. He and his jolly gang of BU communications students and staff ID features, do real video reporting, and sit with singles and groups for terse, innovative interviews. Chris links to some on Facebook, to others on the NNN page, and others on his Vimeo area. This not only goes on day after day, but it is original and insightful.

If anything, Chris is overly fair. He often is the idea midwife, as in Socrates' maieutic method of questioning guests. He's so savvy and has such deep perspective that it must be tough for him to analyze without verbally smacking some guests around. He manages quite well.

That's rare to the point of being singular among news types. It seems at any given news cycle, they share and slightly vary maybe a dozen themes. They often draw on the same sources and stack their little reportage still life a little differently from what they have recently heard.

They are far from the only ones to do this. Hell, they're earning a living. Likewise, clerics, particularly Protestant preachers who have to write and deliver two to four sermons a month struggle with such fatigue and imitation.

From the pew, it may seem like 10 to 30 minutes of fresh material a week would be easy. Well, try that yourself, particularly if you are out visiting the ill, counseling the befuddled, conducting rituals, managing staff members, co-planning services including music and more.

For the unchurched and those have no cause to attend services in other churches, be aware that ministers habitually steal from one another. As with news themes, there seem to be a limited number to go around for those who have to deliver constantly. Fortunately for those with sermon block, ministers share sermons in many publications, and now in podcasts and on blogs. They give; they take.

The same topics spread around with very similar treatments. There's no foul here, unless you have reason to be in four different churches in a month hearing the same bit. Even some of those bear repeating. The seasonal revival of Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, continues to work. Likewise, so do the more recent Who Moved My Cheese and You Be Glad at that star!

Attach no shame to a preacher who delivers the classics well. Folk who are wellsprings of fresh ideas are rarer than oases in huge, dry deserts.

Oddly for me though, I don't have writer's block. I could easily write multiple posts on my various blogs daily should I choose and thing my followers or stumblers-upon could take it.

I have many shortcomings. I immediately think of my lack of musical ability. I can't keep a tune or hit a note on command or keep a good rhythm clapping or dancing or play any instrument other than toys, such jug band ones as jaw harp, nose flute and of course, jug.

It was in college that I became aware that most folk have serious problems writing, largely through lack of ideas for topics. I helped teammates, classmates, roommates, and girlfriends. On the three-times-a-week college paper, I could supply a column for each, write news stories, and one year help the often weeping editor-in-chief by ghosting her weekly editorial when she blanked a hour before press time.

Today's internet world is great for swapping and stealing ideas though. Reporters and clerics alike can develop good searching skills (also difficult for some folk), so they have a solid place to start. You'd expect and hope that they don't cut and paste though.

This musing had a trigger last evening as I heard my voice on an NPR segment on WBUR. The reporter was flogging other folks' ideas about Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown. So, in the traffic tie-up, I listened to her treatment. More on this in the next post.

Tags: massmarrier, ideas, news, sermons, writer's block, media, Chris Lovett, WBUR, Elizabeth Warren

Delicious GOP Self-Destruction

2011-12-21T09:59:00.002-05:00

But that the latest, and only one of many, decisions by the House GOP will harm millions of us, their call to do a huge Christmas FU on payroll taxes and unemployment benefits would just be superb theater. Speaker John Boehner's calcified response — finger always on the NAY button — is guaranteeing Republican defeat in both the POTUS and Congressional results of 2012.

He astonishes on so many levels. Most obviously, to a nation that has screamed loudly and long that hampering, harming and hindering the middle-class and poor of us is in no longer acceptable, pulling such tricks again speaks only to political suicidal drives. Thank you, Boehner. Thank you, winger extremists. You have taken sure and easy victories and buried them under your dogmatic and doctrinaire tracts.

What's truly astonishing is not that the majority GOP in the House is hectoring Dems and the POTUS or beating up the majority of Americans (a.k.a. voters). Rather, they know from the history of the past decade plus and recent times that this backfires. Those of us who pay attention also know that the underlying economic ploys are God awful and plain stupid.

Instead, they seem to try using their catchphrases, like the big lies of greedy big shots being both job creators and magnanimously trickling down their huge tax breaks and profits to the plebes and workers. Sorry, kiddies, those have gone far beyond different interpretations of the same information and into the realm of fantasy and cruel disdain. Numbers alone show they are job destroyers who suck the wealth and even disposable income from the rest of us.

Now I'm left remembering that Lightnin' Hopkins saying, "I don't understand why people don't understand the way I do."

Consider though what Rachel Maddow so clearly presented last night about what Boehner's evil clowns are really doing.

Alas, poor yuck. I knew them well.

2011-12-16T19:46:00.002-05:00

What would this holy season be without a hate-based fund-raiser from an inaptly named pro-family group? The Mass Family Institute has you covered, or rather smothered.

Consider the following spurious email from them, ending with a big honking DONATE button:

That's right, kiddies. after twisting the public-accommodations core of this transgender civil-rights bill around, the MFI shows what's it's always been about.

In the real world, pitching public accommodations as being about little girls in public toilets is outrageous dishonesty and dishonor. What's at issue here is a definable class of citizens who can still be legally denied access to hotel rooms, tables at restaurants (and yes lunch counters), or any other for-pay or open facility the rest of us can use — exclusively by who they are on the caprice of people who run a facility. It isn't about bathrooms or locker rooms or any such hoo-ha.

The MFI is simply another winger bigot group that tricks its dumb donors with emotional calls. It's about making money on the stupidity and ignorance of others. It's about paying the salaries and expenses of MFI staff.

Sure, it's disgusting and dishonest and hateful. They've been doing it for many years. While their membership plunges or dies off, they keep at it. This time around, they lost big in terms of the bulk of transgender rights passing into law.

Some MFI members may even be aware that cities (like Boston) and states that have had transgender protections for many years do not have the dire problems MFI swears will happen. MFI is not about facts or truth.

In a year or two, the accommodations piece will naturally follow. Then the few B&B and restaurant owners who quiver into helplessness or rage when they are unsure at first glance whether a customer is a man or a woman will have to suck it up. They'll have to, well, do as all the major religions like Christianity mandate, treat others as they would like to be treated.

Then the MFI staff might have to find something honest to do for a living. I wonder if they'll remember how.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, transgender, civil rights, golden rule, MFI

Not a Generational Thing

2011-12-15T16:06:00.002-05:00

While selective essayists like Tom Brokaw love to pretend about The Greatest Generation, most of us know more to the story.

Of course, as a boomer, I am prey to the cliché of each generation disdaining the obvious flaws of the preceding one. We aren't short of examples, such as our parents' delusion that a never-ending post-WWII growth spiral would pay for their corporate and governmental excesses, and that the Vietnam was was wise, right and winnable.

Yet it is annoying and shameful that now that the boomers are pretty much in charge, they, that is we, are doing many of the same stupid things that the WWII, greatest/greediest generation did.

The warmongering of the elected boomers is stunning. We're not as crazy and hateful about homosexuals, so there's that. Polls are solidly convincing that when the WWII generation dies off, marriage equality will occur. They hated equality for African Americans, for women and now for gays. That'll be better soon and the states can fix those inane and vicious one-man/one-woman laws and amendments.

On the other hand, George Bush the Lesser and Barack Obama are the same on stripping away our rights and accustomed liberties. They both are monsters of awful effect.

For a decade or so, we figured that the intrusive, unconstitutional, dictatorial spying, wiretapping, and secret-police tactics belonged to the days of J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon. We boomers grew up tittering about commies under the bed and Tricky Dick's paranoia. Those are not limited to previous generations. Not by a long shot!

Boomer Bush with his Igor Chaney implemented a terrible reign of the inaptly named Homeland Security. The ramifications include as bad a set of laws and secret policing as we have seen since the British occupation in the colonial period. To his permanent, ineffable disgrace, Bush was wont to say if you have nothing to hide, you can't object to the spying, police bullying, and wiping out the powers of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Who needs habeas corpus when arbitrary whispers of terrorism trump the protections millions of died for from even before we formally were a nation?

We boomers grew up with a deep sense of our citizens' rights. Our history and civics classes found reinforcement in books, comics, TV and movies with morals about our rich set of liberties. We did learn along the way that they hadn't always applied to Native Americans, black folk, women, Asians and many other groups, nor to interracial couples and on and on. Yet, we saw how in one area after another, we had fixed those oversights, shortcomings, and legal bigotries.

However, we as a nation have an ingrained habit of electing exactly the Presidents who most despise and abuse those liberties boomers assumed we'd have. Long before he was prez, Nixon was Joe McCarthy's chief investigator on the House Committee on Un-American Activities, a.k.a. HUAC. That alone should have disqualified him from higher office. George Bush the elder was head spook at the CIA, which likewise should have kept a professional liar and sneak from the Oval Office. That Reagan fellow likewise was the dishonorable, dishonest, anti-free-speech/anti-liberty black list guy in Hollywood. Yet, he also became POTUS.

Each of those Presidents spit at and stomped on U.S. citizens' freedoms. There was always an excuse of the Cold War, 9/11 or whatever. Give up what defined America to stay alive, they'd tell us.

Now that Obama guy has done it repeatedly. The latest is surelyt as reprehensible as it gets, apparently done to solidify the POTUS power at the expense of the rest of us.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon has a frightening series on this. Check this current post and click to his background ones. The Levin/McCain bill that Obama signed has to be found unconstitutional, I say, but until it is, it allows indefinite detention of anyone suspected by undefined police types of terrorism leanings against this country, either here or overseas. That's right, boys and girls, anyone anywhere can be picked up and incarcerated without proof or defense for as long as the formerly freedom supporting U.S. agents feel like.

Thinking of Tricky Dick, how un-American can you get, Barack?

Tags: massmarrier, secret police, Bill of Rights, habeas corpus, McCarthyism, Levin McCain, detention

Another Decal Wife Pressed On Stage

2011-12-04T19:18:00.000-05:00

Finally...from the Atlanta JC newspaper comes the analysis I've been wanting to read. Jim Galloway writes about the tiny Gloria Cain playing the giant on stage behind her failed hubby Herman.

Alas and to the embarrassment of pols of both major parties from local to POTUS level, we have seen this far too many times. The wife of the puffball taken down by accusations or even verdicts of lying, stealing, philandering and all manner of ethical sins stands by while he makes excuses or outright lies yet again.

We were there with Gloria. At last for the present, the whole 23-minute speech is at the NYT. Watch the wife.

I let the whole spectacle splat on the windshield of news, in no small part to gauge body language of both of them. She's been married to this gonif for 43 years. He's made piles of money, which she could certainly separate him from if she chose divorce. Honest to God, his defiant statements continue to be fantastic tales for every obvious misdeed and character flaw. Those include multiple payoffs for sexual harassment, as well as reasonable and credible claim of a 13-year mistress relationship. He would have us, and Gloria, believe that his employer paid off employees for no particular cause and that he gave a woman many thousands of dollars for more than a decade just because he is a giving sort of guy.

Perhaps most insulting to us, to his supporters and to Gloria Cain is his recent tack expressed by his staff that any mistress would be a consensual and private matter. Say no more, and they mean say no more. Unfortunately, many on the left and right have pointed out he set himself up as a minister and values model, so he opened himself to just such comment. This reeks with the redolence of Newt Gingrich leading the impeachment against Bill Clinton for covering up receiving adulterous fellatio at the same time Gingrich was sleeping around on this deathly ill wife.

Men have their needs, but honor and honest don't seem to be among them.

To Gloria on stage, she did not betray her betraying husband. Like a cliché photograph, she stood full five paces behind Herman as he propped up his facade for 22-plus minutes. She applauded casually when the audience of supporters did. At only one point, shown in the screen cap above, she showed any animation by seeming to gesture in thanks to the supporters as Herman thanked them, and even her, again.

For the rest of the time, she was implacable, inscrutable. She did show for the theater, but ad libbed nothing. She did not wear a cartoon smile as so many wronged wives have next to their pol hubbies (generally shortly before filing for divorce). She did not make any false display of enthusiastic support. Hers was the face of acceptance.

I assume she has gotten used to accepting quite a bit in 43 years of marriage to the huge, honking ego that is the dishonorable Herman. I also suspect that his self-indulgence has exceeded even her capacity. This is to be continued.

Who Knows Newt?

2011-12-04T17:54:00.000-05:00

Creepy crawly lizard man, a.k.a. Newt Gingrich, sits atop the Iowa rock. Punditry pounces and pronounces that dropout Herman Cain's 8% of GOP voters slithered to the more attractive of the reptiles available.

The corollary to chant of the predictive chorus is that Dems smirk and salivate that Gingrich's candidacy. Shift to stage right to hear, "Mighty, mighty orator Obama. Nasty, nasty goader Gingrich will lay him low!"

My take is a bit different. If the POTUS is the Prez race debate champ, it is by default. The deeply flawed GOP candidates open their mouths to let dull winds from empty minds rush out.

Newt is indeed a risible selection. It seems the same majority of Republican (as wingers insist on calling Democratic voters and the party, Democrat voters/party, should they be Republic voters/party?) voters have sudden amnesia on why they found his despicable and unacceptable as either a candidate or even dinner guest.

Another corollary to his judgment is a new meme of MSM and bloggers alike — that GOP voters will forgive his dreadful basket of sins because he admits failings and claims he has been redeemed by God. Let us pretend for the moment that wingers are not so dull-witted.

That Newt fellow not only had known affairs when each of his first two wives were dreadfully ill — MS for one and cancer for another — he traded in those wives for younger models like they were sputtering cars at the end of the lease periods. This anti-marriage stance might seem to be at odds with the professed, if you pardon the expression, pro-family values of the right. However, none of us can keep track of how many winger pols and preachers have been proven fornicators and adulterers. We know only that when caught, they and their apologists are wont to say, "Oh, it's just like Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy."

Odd too is that Gingrich bills himself as a professor and scholar, hence an authority on all subjects domestic and foreign. Of course, his high scholarship was low-brow. He joined a fourth-rate school as an assistant professor of history, transferring to geography, and quit when denied tenure. His credentials are written on water.That doesn't stop him from making Herman-Cain-level claims that he'll bring the big ideas that will save us all.

Odder still is how the GOP voters are trying mightily to forget his many non-stereotypical conservative positions, as on immigration and climate change. He wriggled himself up to House Speaker before facing 84 ethics charges, and then resigning after his leadership led to a disastrous midterm House election and majority loss. Even now as he calls for prosecution of House Dems involved in any way with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, he denies that while taking millions from them himself in what he somehow convinces no one that he was a lobbyist for them.

Any voter who supports this newt Newt can only be grotesquely ignorant or splendidly delusional.

This calls for a variation on the Star Wars line, let the Newt win. Only good can come of it for the Dems next year.

Cain Can't

2011-12-03T14:59:00.000-05:00

So, boys and girls, the Hermanator terminated his shuddering run to top the GOP flops. I go for a long walk and Cain sneaks away.

An initial reaction is what wondrous spin, a.k.a. lies, will his former boosters make of it. Think of the dreadful Ann Coulter. It was only last week that she was spewing calumnies — aimed at the increasing set of women who said Cain had sexually harassed them and in that latest case had her as his mistress for 13 years. Coulter's masterpiece of spurious slander holds that:

Those who criticize Cain are racists
The women who accuse him must be lying because they don't have enough corroboration

The second angle is typical Coulter, typical winger and typical misogynist. Some claim Coulter's a woman, but that attitude is straight from when women were considered property. The attitude here used to be, as it still is in some countries, that rape isn't rape unless there were at least two witnesses to swear to it. Likewise, it used to be and too often still is that sexual harassment, even physical advances, are not to be taken seriously without additional witnesses willing to testify.

Really, Ann? Herman is innocent if he was so clever as to cover his tracks, to make his worst moves in dark, parked cars, and make his sexual professions of desire or thanks in unrecorded phone calls? Really?

That's a common winger tactic, but particularly nasty here. We hear the lies nationwide on Fox and the likes of Malkin as well. Locally, we don't get much in Massachusetts beyond the state GOP and the RedMassGroup. They are prone to do the Pee-wee Herman I'm rubber/you're glue thing when their pols are guilty of adultery, bribery or corruption. They'll say that, well, Bill Clinton got fellatio from an intern and lied about it or that Jack or Ted Kennedy had affairs. These are not the droids you seek.

In contrast, I appreciated the folksy take last night on Politics Nation hosted by Al Sharpton. As we all waited the timing of Cain's quitting (sudden or a prolonged agony?), the Rev. Sharpton discussed the Rev. Cain without lies or hysterics.

The show's clearest and savviest response though was by guest Joe Madison (about 6:30 into this segment). Sharpton asked for his advice to Cain and heard, "Take a large piece of jewelry to y our wife and ask her for your forgiveness." He followed up immediately with "forget about the Presidential campaign" and try to salvage what's important, a 43-year marriage.

Whether Cain's wife dumps him is TBD. What we can be pretty sure of is that no winger commentators or pols will apology for anything, anytime, anywhere. They are as constant as the monsoon season.

No 2012 Ride on Marriage Horse

2011-12-02T08:00:00.000-05:00

A few fools still try to ride the same-sex marriage horse. Nostalgia for the 2004 election alone may inspire this. Back in the Kerry/Bush-the-Lesser contest, fears of queers still played well nationally, and on the state level with the worst of them rushing anti-SSM laws and amendments.

The irrational, malicious and puerile do require much repetition over long periods to understand the obvious.

In this election cycle, splendid proof that we are finally catching up to the larger industrialized world includes how unimportant SSM is in debates and speeches. Out of the GOP clown car, only the craziest, that Bachmann person, is the atavism. While polls and election results show clearly that Americans have transcended this former issue, Michele alone clings to selective Old Testament justifications for discrimination.

As illustrated all to plainly in the news and via Huffington Post with video, Bachmann retreats to crazy talk even when quietly confronted by a high-school student Jane Schmidt.

Wake up, Michele! Kids struggle with and get same-and-different as well as fair-and-unfair early on. Repeating the big lie that we all have the same rights, so long as gay people marry folk of the opposite gender is dishonest and dishonorable on several levels.

Our disgraceful history has many blotches of crazy discrimination. Women couldn't vote or own property, white marriages to Chinese or black or other folk were prohibited, girls could be cheerleaders but not athletes, restaurant owners could refuse service by race or any other basis. We are finally approaching the enlightenment on homosexuals and their fundamental right to wed.

Yet elsewhere this time, SSM is a wee ripple in the pond. Previous loud haters like Rick Santorum seem to get it. If pressed, they'll say reflexively but quietly they're opposed to SSM or use some silly, disingenuous term like "traditional marriage," when they mean they want to appear anti-marriage, anti-family, and anti-adoption to those who would punish kids as well as adults to hurt, harm and hinder homosexuals.

Even our timid POTUS drags out his perhaps insincere statement of belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. Of course, he's run around this tree many times. As a lawyer, he clearly knows the differences between civil marriage and individual church ritual or doctrine. In the last election and his first term, he cowardly chose not to do the right thing, not to proclaim that SSM is a civil-rights issue. Assuming his reelection, will he finally show courage and leadership here? I bet yes.

Meanwhile, fortunately for nation and the larger political dialog, candidates have nothing to gain by Bachmann-style gay bashing. That is, if your pardon the expression, evolution.

Around the nation, slowly increasing numbers of states institute SSM. Sure, a large majority have those anti-gay/anti-SSM laws and amendments. Yet, it's likely California will join several populous Eastern states by re-instituting SSM within a year or so as court actions inch forward. That will fundamentally be the game, with the smaller, more primitive states either left to undo their discrimination blunders or perhaps a SCOTUS finding along the line of Loving v. Virginia, but for SSM.

Either way, it can't happen fast enough for me. Yet, I recognize that many people take a long time to come to terms with any change that first requires an emotional shift before they can hear reason. Meanwhile, we can be glad SSM is a non-issue this election cycle.

Barbed and frank Barney Frank

2011-11-28T13:57:00.001-05:00

My immediate thoughts on reading that U.S. Rep. Barney Frank would not run for reelection were:

One fewer courageous progressives in Congress
The clarity of vision in the House will plunge
Some tiny minded winger in Sen. Scott Brown's mold may slither into the seat

Yet, the 71-year-old, 16 termer may well be doing the right thing for various other reasons. To the WaPo, he said candidly (his only mode) that his newly reconstructed district would be much more conservative and that at his age he thought he didn't have the energy level for that kind of prolonged contention.

There's one lesson. We see far too many in Congress tired of body, mind and emotion plugging along. We occasionally see the likes of a near dead, addlepated Sen. Strom Thurmond returning to office long after they can no longer serve any useful public duty. In contrast, Frank still has fire and wit and knowledge and, as needed, sense of outrage.

As soon as it became clear he'd announce today, the local winger papers and blogs piled on jealous vitriol. It was an early Christmas present and he should bear the responsibility for the economic collapse and recession. In reality, beyond such spite, he was a formidable force to gather the hate and fear of the right and the corporate lickspittles.

I should be so short-tempered. I am wont to Southern politeness and a UU wishy-washy desire to let people have their say before pointing out how wrong they are and why. He does not tolerate such inanity. He is quick to call B.S. on liars and frauds, be they committee witnesses or other Congressmen.

As such, there's lesson two for whoever follows him and to his peers. You frame the argument when you do not allow deceit and stupidity unchallenged into the debate. Although often funny, he may do that a bit too abruptly and with too intense a level of ridicule, but the end is the right one. Do not pretend that everyone's opinions are as right or as valuable as another's.

Frank has long been a bugbear to wingers. He is viper tongued, impatient, and of course, openly gay. He finds immorality and dishonor not in anyone's sexual orientation, rather in making many Americans go without so a few can play Scrooge McDuck.

We can at least hope that Frank has set the pattern for a few younger progressive pols...maybe even that one will step up in 2012.

Tags: massmarrier, Barney Frank, Congress, retire

Time to Make the Marriage

2011-11-22T05:45:00.000-05:00

Yes, yes, yes, I am Mike Ball, but I'm a.k.a. massmarrier. That is, this blog sprung coming up on eight years ago from a double marriage-per-Massachusetts catalyst. Long-term friends asked me to solemnize their coupling at the same time the commonwealth's highest court was deciding whether marriage equality was the law here.

Now I'm still about the business of marrying folk. That's a bit of a pun, as I am a long term monogamous guy. I'm no Newt or Big Dog Clinton. No one puts asunder in our house.

Next month will mark solemnization number four. A buddy from several years back asked me to do the theater and signature for his eldest daughter. That will happen right after Christmas.

Originally, I'd figured to go one a year. First it was Kay and Paul, she I'd known long and well, socially and in church service. She'd followed me immediately chairing first Personnel when it meant figurative heads on the ground, job descriptions, and battles over benefits and salaries and then the Prudential Committee (the board). We'd fought far too many skirmishes and major battles not to be friends. She was also the one who knew that ordinary, non-ordained folk could perform marriages here, so long as you petitioned the governor's office.

The next year, Jasper, a much longer term friend, yea, back from college days in South Carolina, asked whether I would marry him and his partner Jay. We attended their civil ceremony in New Hampshire the previous year, before same-sex marriage was in place here. Like so many long-partnered homosexual couples, they wanted, well, equality in the form of marriage.

Next was the long spell. I tried to lure sandbox buddy Charles from Florida. He and partner Karl have been together almost as long as Cindy and I. Of course, a Massachusetts marriage means nothing to the satraps of Florida, but they intend to come here and have me solemnize their union as well.

Forget the dreadful, hateful lies of the self-styled pro-marriage/pro-family wingers. We who actually are pro-marriage and pro-family believe in the legal union for those committed to each other. We thus have to believe in marriage equality.

In the middle, I figured I was out of the marriage business. That in itself is a funny term. Of course, I charge no one. In fact, I pay the $25 application fee for the one-day designation of solemnization myself. It is well worth it to me.

However, my almost-32-year-old firstborn surprised us by asking me to solemnize his marriage this June. Of course, that's a good surprise that a parent likes, officiating at Aaron and Jessica's wedding. In contrast, I know from others there are the surprises of "You ruined my life. I never want to hear from you again," or "It's a felony charge. They want $50,000 cash bail."

The fourth marriage will be next month and the fifth sometime next year. That's not exactly on track for even an avocation. However, a long-time friend who's a minister has more than once called my one-day solemnizations "poaching." He holds that doing weddings is an important income supplement for clerics. He doesn't like the MA law, recently copied by CA, that allows plain folk to pronounce the couple married and sign the license making it legal.

I do. I recommend it.

Performing the marriages of friends or even of friends' children is an emotional rush. I think it might be a wee version of what an OB feels delivering babies.

I was in on the birth of my three, catching all, and doing the final one solo as the nurses and midwives were across the room chatting, not realizing it was showtime. While I have to say I was more involved and fulfilled by delivering my sons, I was deeply moved by the three marriages I've already done. Those are over a lot faster than labor and they are a lot less physically messy, but they too are quite a bit of fun and make you feel a part of something important.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, solemnization

How Transgender Rights Finally Passed

2011-11-21T12:53:00.001-05:00

Grouse, moan...I can complain about what is missing from the long-delayed transgender-rights bill that finally passed in MA. I have already carped about the big hole of public accommodation.

Yet, we need to keep in mind that that the plug uglies tried successfully for years to pretend this was the bathroom bill instead of an issue of civil rights and plain fairness. What the new law will do is huge — prevent discrimination on gender identity in housing, employment and credit.

They can circle back and do the missing piece...we would hope in the next legislative session.

For a fascinating look at who to bless and what kind of work they did, click over to this diary at BlueMassGroup.

Covert Despots

2011-11-20T10:17:00.001-05:00

Unacknowledged in the Occupy Boston/Greenway battle is yet another manifestation of autonomous agencies. The Rose F. Kennedy Greenway is just one of many organizations given terrific power in a narrow scope by government, one whose folk consider themselves legislators and constabulary.

In this particular, peculiar case, the chair of the organization cites their manufactured rules as de facto laws. It wants the city to enforce these by whatever force necessary, while claiming to want a gentle resolution.

Who died and made them king? Well, we all did and it's the American way. From nuclear regulation to professional baseball to physicians' associations among who knows how many examples, we cede authority and often pay many hidden costs.

Lackaday, good-hearted and pretty smart City Councilor Matt O'Malley got caught in this web spun by Greenway Chair Georgia Murray. In her open letter to Mayor Tom Menino, she asked to throw the bums out. She cited their rules, as though these were laws. She points to rules allowing only "passive enjoyment" of Dewey Square Park, prohibition on "overnight sleeping," and a permit for "Any use of the park that requires set ups (sic) and anticipates crowds." Her letter reads in part, "We believe that the current use by Occupy Boston is not compatible with our obligation to ensure that everyone may enjoy the Greenway..."

As a pseudo-lawmaker, she tries to bolster her case with odd, vague justifications, including:

The Conservancy abandoned plans to have a food festival on October 15 on Dewey Square Park (a permitted event) from public safety concerns. We anticipated large crowds of attendees and there was inadequate space due to Occupy Boston. Fifteen small businesses lost income they were counting on.
On our Farmer’s Market days, the farmers are experiencing a real reduction in income due to the noise, odors, and interference by the members of Occupy Boston and other protest groups.
Our neighbors are buffeted by noise and wary of aggressive confrontation when they are passing through the Dewey Square Park.
There are disturbing incidents of drug dealing.
Sanitary conditions are deteriorating significantly over time. Although we do not currently have a rat infestation problem, it is only a matter of time given the current conditions.

Or from other angles:

Greenway folk did not adapt to the well-known Occupy encampment, by moving its festival to one of the several huge, open plazas short distances down the park.
Unquantified hearsay about the markets is dubious, particularly the "noise, odors and interference" claim that reads like Thurston Howell III remarks.
Likewise, there's more hearsay about inconvenience to unspecified "neighbors."
Assertions of drug dealing in a park well known from nighttime drug dealing long before Occupy.
Unsubstantiated claims of deteriorating sanitary conditions, replete with a future fantasy about maybe rats, in a camp with continuous programs for cleaning, rubbish removal and more.

This junior-high level rhetoric did suck in O'Malley. The Herald tried to stir up some trouble in its ongoing anti-hippie mode. It got him to say what he surely thought might be fairly neutral lingo, "The Conservancy makes a strong case. Small businesses are hurting from this. It may be time to move them off the Greenway." They did pick up on his addendum that any eviction "should be done 'peaceably.'"

Matt's a great guy and a lot more free-speech oriented than the typical Herald winger. I bet he figured he was threading this political needle instead of getting a bunch of snotty comments, including from me, on his Facebook page.

The imperiousness of the Greenway people is predictable. First, they are volunteer do-gooders. As is typical of that group, they act like others should do what they want because they are so splendid in character and deed.

Beyond the typical volunteer syndrome, they also show the inherent problem of the quasi-autonomous groups. These have nominal power in restricted areas. In that process, they too often act as though their privately promulgated rules have the standing and power of laws produced through representative legislation.

Let's be plain.The Greenway Conservancy folk are not lawmakers and neither cops nor prosecutors.Their rules are guidelines, which they at least obliquely acknowledge by asking the mayor to ask the cops to do something. The letter does read as though their rules are laws, at the very least publicly discussed and approved regulations that might emerge from City Council.

We've experienced this from many agencies. Some are scary and dangerous, like the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Nuclear Regulatory Agency). Some should be benign, like the American Medical Association, which grew into regulatory powers over physicians, but all too often does not discipline or remove those needing it.

In the current, very local case, the Greenway Conservancy folk apparently stifled their Brahmin impulse until they popped. They saw the courts refuse to clear Occupy's camp and the mayor deciding to hang back. At least Menino has the political savvy to understand the peril of smothering protest in the town that fomented the American Revolution.

In contrast, the Conservancy board has decided whom they will classify as public and what activities they will allow. Now they are stomping their feet.

Tags: massmarrier, Boston, Greenway, Conservancy, Occupy Boston, Menino, O'Malley

Pandora's Casino

2011-11-17T12:00:00.001-05:00

All it takes now to open for once and forever the lid on casino and slot gambling here is Gov. Deval Patrick's signature on the disgraceful bill finalized yesterday. There's a tiny chance you can influence him with a call, email, visit or letter (go to the contacts page to pick your method[s]).

However, in a for-God's-sake-do-something economic panic, Patrick and the frequently sensible Senate President Therese Murray turned blind and stupid. Against all evidence, they are:

Pretending that commonwealth will get big revenue gains from gambling
Pretending that casino and slots money will come from out-of-state gamblers and from money our residents would spend elsewhere
Pretending that there will be substantial increases in employment here short and longer term
Pretending that huge increased costs for infrastructure and other state support will somehow not be huge
Pretending that we alone will break the pattern of Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Mississippi and the other casino/slot destinations that have destroyed economies, elevated unemployment, and zombie-like addicted gamblers
Pretending that the new joints won't destroy and cannibalize the existing lottery

Don't Rush

As it appears inevitable that we'll be starting the slide with the three casinos and the ~~crack house~~ slot parlor, those with any wits should do the best possible in that case. Just over a month ago, casino expert William Eadington was in town at a Rappaport Center session on this very subject. We are doing none, nada, zip of the best practices that minimize the damage and maximize the gains of gambling.

In the shortest form, what the few places that have managed this process well have done start with getting highly detailed proposals for any casino. Instead, we're doing the absolutely stupidest way of taking bids and looking for the one that promises the best return on only vague plans.

In contract, places like Singapore and Melbourne did it right, taking several years to evaluate full proposals and considering all the effects. They ended up with true destination resorts that attract tourists for a lot more than gambling and for a long longer stays (and more expenditure).

They also tightly control access by locals to minimize effects of addictive gambling. Known abusers are ID'ed and refused entry.

Even before this proposal stage, which should last several years, the government should be clear on what it expects. Then it can set up the operations to those aims. For example, Pennsylvania charges high taxes on winnings because its aim is increased tax revenue. Singapore charges very low taxes because it aims to create that destination resort, earning from non-gambling activities as well. In addition, its tax policy lures the highest rollers from far away.

We have not done that and apparently do not intend to do so. Instead, our legislators and the executive branch seem blindly digging into gambling mud, hoping to come up with some extra money.

The other key aspect Eadington noted gets snorts and guffaws from MA residents. The process for setting up and overseeing the casinos/slots has to be highly honorable and transparent (Pause to laugh loudly.)

We saw the opposite at its worst. As the cliché variously runs, Caesar's wife must be above reproach (or suspicion). Instead, we suspect dirty dealing by lawmakers even before the gambling passed. Instead of forbidding legislators' involvement in gambling ownership or operations forever, we dropped down to five years after leaving the General Court, then the already suspect lawmakers knocked that to a single year. Now even some of them are wailing about the onus of not being able to suckle on the gambling teats of this cow they have fed immediately.

This process has been dirty from the beginning and stinks more every time the legislature touches it.There's no way to shut the lid on this Pandora's box once Patrick makes the act into law with his signature.

He promised us long ago that if casinos came to MA, they would be only a small facet of his plan to develop various types of business. The model was economic development along the line of funding genetic engineering or other technologies.

Perhaps understandably, the deep and wide recession and its effects have washed away his resolve on this. That's no reason not to make it known to him that you don't want him to sign casinos/slots into law.

If that happens as it surely appears likely, the very least we should demand is first, clarification on what we expect from gambling income, and second, two to five years to receive detailed proposals on sites.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, casinos, gambling

Halfway Up Transgender Rights Trail

2011-11-16T08:41:00.001-05:00

Today, the MA Senate will certainly join the House in passing the Transgender Equal Rights act. Stripped of public-accommodation protections, H.502/S.764 still puts into law strong protections for transgenders in housing and employment. Yesterday, the House vote was 95 to 58 in favor.

Bay Windows went to the good guys for comment. The most salient recap may be:

"We support this bill," said Jennifer Levi, director of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders’ (GLAD) Transgender Rights Project. "We want complete protections for transgender people -- including in public accommodations -- but also know that in order to get there, we cannot walk away from the legislature’s first step toward achieving those full protections."

Almost certainly, the plug uglies, including Massachusetts Family Institute got their Pyrrhic mini-victory though. Using disingenuous slogans and arguments, the public-accommodation aspect of the legislation will have to wait for another legislative session. It almost certainly will happen, but not this year.

Like other winger organizations, MFI has led the attack on equality with illogically reframing the issue and smearing the beneficiaries. In this case, this seminal bill to offer basic equality was plugged as special rights and the bathroom bill. Instead of admitting the overt discrimination faced by the estimated 33,000 transgender folk in the commonwealth, the opponents manufactured demons in the john. They trivialized the problems and pretended that this bill would mean men dressed as women would invade the women's room and girls' rooms everywhere.

The protect-your-daughters lie seemed to resonate with the confused and the anti-LGBT folk out and in the legislature. Of course, it's a red herring, but it did manage to delay full equality.

I'm betting the rest will happen next year, but meanwhile, yesterday was and today will be a good day for fairness and equal rights.

Morning Update: The MA Senate did approve the bill, by voice vote this morning.

Senate Seekers Not Quitting

2011-11-15T09:29:00.001-05:00

Last evening's U.S. Senate debate-like-object with two candidates was a splendid chance to chat with, then hear two of them, Tom Conroy and Herb Robinson. Rhetorically, physically and in policy, contrasts between them were wonderfully stark. In a time and place of sameness, I think the couple dozen of us left with clear senses of what they are about, more than we have seen before.

This one was at Pine Manor College and driven by public policy consultant Pamela Julian. She's also a League of Women Voters member and wants that group to help sponsor more of these for this race.

Neither candidate as been a guest on Left Ahead. Several others, including folk who have dropped out have been, including Elizabeth Warren. I was not disappointed by meeting and listening to two of what Robinson used to refer to himself as low man on the totem pole. "I am in the lowest candidate in this race," he said. "We all know that."

He noted in his remarks that he doesn't have a lot of money, campaigns part time as a full-time engineer, and isn't given much of a shot. In contrast, while he managed to stifle it for much of his time at the podium, Conroy called out the "pundits and prognosticators" who had already given the Democratic nomination to Warren.

The two were as different in presentation as physically. Both were good company, although Robinson likely would make a better dinner or bar companion, with good stories and amiability. In profile, Conroy is a raptor, all edges and sinew. He was alert, loud and emphatic. The rotund, furry cheeked Robinson was clearly bright and terribly sincere. He was soft-spoken, even sleepy, but had specific goals and several innovative proposals. He also was not afraid to preach some doom about the economy and nuclear power.

Conroy started with matches to Warren's about-me routines and even captured a bit of the POTUS' calling out of prototypical Americans. On the up-from-tough-roots bio, he included such anecdotes as his parents with no spare money. "My mother at one point didn't even have a quarter to buy a subway token to take me to the hospital when I was so sick I couldn't eat," he said. He got to run a business and become a state rep through education and his parents' example of "hard word, dedication, with discipline and some smarts and some prayer and some help from people in the community, and a sense of service to others in need." Then we went to Terry, Jen and Michael whom he met as he walked 650-plus miles around the commonwealth. Each was a prototypical resident struggling.

Whew, there's a full basket.

In contrast, Robinson spoke of three goals — fixing the economy first, making "America a better place for all of us," and "do it safely." He had specific proposals, such as tying capital gains taxes to unemployment. For example, if the jobless rate is 6.5% or above, the tax rises and rich folk would get a break if it falls to 2.5% or below. He wants capital gains taxes as regular income, adjusted for inflation.

He didn't present any sob or inspirational stories. He's been an engineer for 30 years and thinks things through in detail, depth and width.

He noted that incumbent Sen. Scott Brown had no real proposals to fix the economy even after a year and one half in office. "I have two," he said, "and I'm doing this part-time." He said he can make better decisions than Brown and do it safely. He added that unlike the incumbent he "knows the difference between hairspray and nuclear fallout."

Both candidates answered moderator Julian's questions about education saying they were for more fully funding schools and loan programs. Robinson added that with Prop. 2½ limiting municipalities' tax growth rates, "over the long term, every city in Massachusetts is going to be in the same situation as Lawrence." He also noted that the nation spends far too much on the military and that he opposed the Iraq war well before it started.

For a sample of part of Conroy's polished stumped speech, click below for two and a half minutes of him on his game.

Let Loose the Dogs of TV

2011-11-11T07:29:00.001-05:00

Let's pace ourselves. The ads for the 2012 Senate from MA race are just kindling in competing bonfires being heaped.

State and national GOP and wingers accept the now obvious, that Elizabeth Warren will go for the seat against incumbent Scott Brown. Following the Citizens United/Super PAC/money-is-free-speech boner, this is the election where will find out how stupid and destructive that SCOTUS decision was.

Both Brown and Warren already have support from well funded and often hidden snipers. There are tons of coverage on the new, nasty reality. You can also find lots of examples, which I won't bother to embed any of here. Head to YouTube and search for strings like Scott Brown oil or Elizabeth Warren OWS to find current ones. Fresh dirt for him is here and for her here.

Disclaimer: We chatted with Warren over at Left Ahead last month and the three of us liked her both personally and for her ideas and solutions.

Let's now consider what's likely to happen with attack ads for these candidates.

First note that Brown has been in office over a year and one-half. Voters, should they bother, can look to his votes and statements, his record. Having never held elective office, Warren has the advantage/disadvantage of presenting what she would have done and would do.

The advantage here definitely looks to be hers. Brown has been a showboat from the beginning. He bragged about being in a pivotal spot, able to block or allow to pass any bill. During his tenure, legislation has been cumbersome, ineffective, and with negative effects on the economy and other big areas. Instead, he could have picked a couple key issues, as wise Senators are wont to, and led bipartisan efforts. Then he could have fairly claimed leadership and national interest — very good reasons for reelection.

She is left with his weakness and her forte, ideas. He speaks in political clichés and generalities. She likely has 20 or 30 IQ points on him, but is no Utopian or limited theoretician. She has the decided advantage of conceiving of and bringing to life the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is much needed, very appreciated, and in strong contrast to anything Brown ever did on state or national levels.

Her weakness is not that she can be aligned with some aims of OWS. Rather, she so far has spoken largely of rescuing and revivifying the American middle-class. Those folk not coincidentally are the majority of us and of voters. On the trail, she'll have to respond to other themes, such as foreign policy.

So far, the winger attacks have seemed desperate. Now there is her statement that she set the intellectual foundation that helped spawn OWS. Previously, they failed in trying to portray her banter with me on Left Ahead about being called a hick in MA as some insult to rural voters. Well, that backfired. Not only was that self-depreciating bit plain to the 10K-plus who heard the YouTube outtakes, it clearly was not what they wanted to trick people into thinking. They also drove over 1,000 so far to listen to the whole show with her, quite likely getting her new supporters. She could use more attack-ad enemies that politically clumsy.

Warren has powerful, detailed solutions to big problems. Her introduction into the race suddenly elevated the dialog beyond any ability to propose or debate that Brown so far has exhibited.

However, Brown has a predictable winger strength. He speaks in those clichés and generalities. Like Presidents Reagan and Bush the Lesser, he offers reassuring, if disingenuous, messages that don't require voters to think. For those who want guns-and-butter and everything-will-be-OK messages, Brown will be ready.

Let's also not overlook the gender factor. MA is at the bottom of states in terms of electing women to statewide office, much less sending them to the U.S. Senate.

Moreover, even here in the allegedly liberal land, STRONG + SMART + FEMALE = SCARY CANDIDATE. Her election would mean a breakthrough for the commonwealth.

As these attack ads proliferate, one factor to watch is the local v. out-of-state one. Voters here are largely provincial. As Southerners are wont to ask, "Who are your people?," Bay Staters favor those born and raised and still living in one MA town. Likewise, they are quick to ask of candidates, "How much of the campaign money is local?"

The latter is kablooey for the first time now. Following the unlimited-money thingummy, we'll see ads and cash flowing largely from out there. You can be sure the MA GOP and wingers will whinge about her support, while they will be even more guilty of the perceived sin of out-of-state funding.

Here, the slight majority of voters are unenrolled in any party. They feign independence and love being wooed. The ads will be for them.

Even flat-out lies by Warren defamers are not likely to benefit Brown with the unenrolled and undecided. The wingers, self-identified social conservatives, Republicans, and even those who demand a man in office made up their minds. If they are swayed at all, it will come from the likely outcome of debates where the empty barn coat creaks and flaps like a barn door.

What a great use of technology in a science-fiction sense if we could go about our lives while fast forwarding all the attack ads until next fall's election. At this time, I'm more delighted than ever that I watch almost no TV.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, Left Ahead, U.S. Senate, Scott Brown, Citizens United, attack ads

Same But Different Boston Councilors

2011-11-09T10:15:00.000-05:00

No incumbent Boston Councilor lost yesterday, but several came close. The crowd favorites switched order. Southie's power comes into question. There was no revolution, yet the results have implications.

Right off, as someone who works the polls for the city, I was pleased that the turnout was just anemic and not the predicted terrible. At 18.1% of voters, you'd think it would mean keening and rending of garments by democracy advocates. However, our expectations have long lowered. Grumpy pundits thought this off-year election with no statewide, mayoral or congressional seats might mean as few as 6% of voters would do their do.

The polling place where I worked had over 28% turnout. Comparatively to expectations and the recent 13% in the last election makes that seem robust and involved. That written, as someone who never misses any election and as a poll warden who's invested, I don't see why we can't expect 60% or higher turnout. I can rant when anyone says, "I wasn't aware we had an election," or "I don't know anything about any of the candidates." Be warned.

Hub Shuffle

Here, Council results should provide sources for jokes among the winners, as well as offline planning for the next go in two years. The expected leaders trailed, and one at-large and one district councilor nearly got nipped. The pundit predictions going back at least six months were flat wrong in many cases.

The not-yet-certified-ergo-unofficial results for at-large run (informal names):

Ayanna PRESSLEY	21.42%
Felix ARROYO	20.26%
John CONNOLLY	18.74%
Steve MURPHY	15.26%
Michael FLAHERTY	14.73%
Will DORCENA	4.99%
Sean RYAN	4.21%

This list has two big punchlines. Among the four winners, Connolly and Murphy had topped the ticket last time and Arroyo and Pressley scraped into office for their first terms. So, the order dramatically shifted in unpredicted ways. The other biggy is that former council president and five-term at-large Councilor Michael Flaherty missed the cut this time.

Oh, experts, where art thine expertise?

Many broadcast, print and blog observers figured Arroyo and particularly Presssley as likely to lose to Flaherty. After all, they were finishing single terms, he is very well known, a skilled fund-raiser and connected, and council elections have long been friendly to Irish American men. Plus, his home of South Boston had the only open district seat, and therefore, more reason for voters to participate.

Here the wise guys weren't so wise.

When I arrived home at 9 PM from closing my poll, the first results from the city showed Flaherty ahead of Murphy and down in District 2, Suzanne Lee ahead of two-term incumbent Bill Linehan. The almost-real-time reporting on election nights is a super feature. I watched as results shifted quickly over the next hour. In the end, we got the above results and a less than 1% apparent win by Linehan; whether Lee requests and gets a recount is TBD.

Rethinking

So, as I'm wont to ask, what can we learn from this?

First, it's a positive statement about diversity in town. Voters pushed the only Latino and first black woman ever to the top of the at-large reelection results. In a city with a growing minority population and a sorry history of racism and sexism in politics, that's good stuff.

Neither Arroyo nor Pressley won sole because of their race or gender. Both have championed good causes, as well as delivered the requisite constituent services. Moreover, as Pressley told me recently, she knows identity politics can work for any candidate. In her case, she looks to voters of color, of her gender, and from her neighborhood to support her, and then she expands from there for the whole electorate.

More surprising is that two Irish-American male councilors slipped to three and four in the results. Both are popular. Each has considerable expertise — Connolly running education and Murphy the budget processes. Also Connolly is the acknowledged campaign-contribution king.

His organization seems to have anticipated a strong showing by Pressley, despite the gloomy forecasts. Last night, about the time the results gelled, his folk sent out a press release. They took a good share of the credit for her success in Connolly's West Roxbury, where he introduced and campaigned with her. And, oh by the way, he has over $100,000 left in this campaign coffers, the release noted.

Murphy is surely less sanguine. He has not yet posted on his campaign site or Facebook pages.

Disclaimer: I know and like Steve. We're neighbors, living only a couple of blocks away.

In his Left Ahead podcast leading up to the election, he did agree that his financial expertise is not as high in profile as some on council. It's my feeling that he's a bit humble and needs to make voters aware that when his peers want to know what this or that big or small matter means in money terms, he's the one they turn to for the judgment. This close vote may inspire him to brag a bit, even if that's not natural for him.

For his part, Flaherty has pledged to work with the council in any way he can. Dorcena and Ryan have not posted on their Facebook pages or websites.

Flaherty remains popular, has positioned himself as an opposition voice to Mayor Tom Menino and surely will not disappear. I suddenly recall many years ago when I ran into President Thomas Jones of the University of South Carolina as we crossed the historic horseshoe of the antebellum campus in opposite directions. He and I (student newspaper type and general agitator) had clashed many times and he considered me a royal pain. Yet we had a begrudging respect for each other. I knew he was being ousted following the student riots there and I told him I was sorry. He said he was like a rabbit with many tunnels and holes. He would reemerge. I'm sure Flaherty will too, after some consideration.

Dorcena, I hope, will not be discouraged. He got in late, with little money and no history of holding office. He chatted with us at Left Ahead as well. He's smart, he's charming and he has a detailed, broad series of issues and proposals. There must be a good place to draw on that energy and those ideas.

Ryan, of course, runs for office. He has low-key, lightly funded campaigns, depending largely on ringing doorbells and speaking at every possible forum. He is one candidate who may change nothing after this election.

At-Large Incumbents? Yes Indeed.

2011-10-31T09:16:00.001-04:00

For the good, Boston's at-large City Council race has a relative plethora of solid candidates. Of course, it's musical desks with four for the seven running.

I've held off endorsements 1) to be close to the election on 11/8, and 2) to stock up Left Ahead's podcasts with candidate shows. One or two shows for six are available (look over the site archives). Sean Ryan promised several times to let us know when he was ready and he apparently never was.

Because I'm late to the gate, I am embarrassed to write that I'm with the Globe and Phoenix and other thoughtful pundit types in endorsing the four incumbents. Each has shown expertise, passion and accomplishment in areas unique to him or her. The city will be best served by building on what may be the best crop of at-large Councilors ever.

Vote Steve Murphy, Felix Arroyo, John Connolly and Ayanna Pressley.

Begrudgingly, I admit that the often-wrong Globe editorial board is spot on in its endorsement of these four. Unfortunately, their new paywall may prevent many from reading this essential piece. Fear not, the Phoenix came in ahead of us all with its similar analysis and conclusions last week.

Most local media seem to grok this. Bay Windows/South End News looks pretty silly, replacing Murphy with former at-large Councilor and body President Michael Flaherty. They fess up that who marches in South Boston's St. Patrick's Day parade is a heavy factor.

The short of it is that Murphy is the finance/budget master and thus essential, Connolly has the vision and perseverance to deal with contentious school money and reform issues, Pressley has brought big issues and solutions to such ignored areas as protecting women and girls as well as teen pregnancy, and Arroyo is a champion of youth, labor and housing issues.

The endorsements tend not to say why you should not vote for someone else. They should. In two of the three cases, that is tough. Ryan stands alone as a libertarian sort whose issues as vaguely defined on his website (fine use of social media and video though) are largely broad strokes painted on broad issues. Coupled with his lack of experience in public office, he is not getting a lot of support of any type.

Flaherty and Will Dorcena are different matters. They are both super guys, both very bright, charming and accomplished. Dorcena is new to elective politics, but understands the problems facing Bostonians and sets out a strong platform. Its a very tired local cliché that you have to introduce a bill four or five times before it becomes law and you have to run for Council at least three times. I for one hope he finds a fit in Boston government and is not disheartened by this race.

Erstwhile Councilor Flaherty is still the wild card. He quit to run against Mayor Tom Menino two years ago and wants back in the chamber. He pretty much claims the whole Council is a pack of lapdogs and they need someone like him to give them some vision and courage. Cynics are sure he just wants a platform to run for Menino's spot again.

He offers a Halloween-scary platform of what's dreadfully wrong in each aspect of Boston life. Unfortunately, it's very short on vision and solution components.

This election though may come down to reinforcing older Boston or looking for continued improvement. Flaherty's path back in will surely rely on the strength of zip-code voting and identity politics. Will his traditional appeal in largely Irish-American areas like Southie and Westie get enough folk to the polls? This certain-to-be low turnout off-year election should be a true test for the mettle of the locals.

I do admit that there's a sliver of irony here. In her most recent Left Ahead show, Pressley was bluntly realistic in noting that identity politics is always important here. She hopes that in addition to progressives, her candidacy inspires women, Bostonians of color, and residents of her neighborhood to go to the polls.

The boon Flaherty gets is that the District Council race features the do-little one-of-us Southie resident and incumbent Bill Linehan against firebrand Suzanne Lee. That race doubles down on the neighborhood vs. city interest bet. It should translate into higher votes in District 2, which includes Southie, Chinatown and the South End.

I can't call either the District race or the four at-large winners. I just tell you how to vote — the four at-large incumbents and Lee.

Tags: massmarrier, Boston, City Council, District 2, Linehan, Suzanne Lee, at-large, Arroyo, Connolly, Flaherty, Murphy, Pressley, elections

Live Free (Straight-Only) NH

2011-10-26T15:32:00.001-04:00

What's amazing about the current generation of Republican legislators is how they disdain republican government and have no trouble subverting American principles. Take New Hampshire. Do take it and don't bring it back until it understands.

In the worst recent example, Tuesday, New Hampshire's GOP dominated House Judiciary Committee in the GOP dominated House advanced a bill to repeal the state's same-sex marriage law. That would be the law that involved myriad public hearings and polling, a wrenching open statewide conversation about how sincere they were about equal rights and that live-free-or-die thing, and close votes in both houses. It passed two years ago and took effect last year.

Over 1700 homosexual couples are married there — to their advantage and to the harm of absolutely no one.

Key ideas for governance around this country include that republicanism. The supreme power of states and nation are supposed to reside in the people, who in turn choose their representatives to do the work of running the show. That has a counterbalance of courts to correct the occasional craziness and unconstitutionality, and roughly half the states have the flamethrower of populism, ballot initiatives or referenda. By the bye, NH has neither of those popular-vote traps.

After Tuesday's rejection of equality and liberty, the key guides to the state and nation, the crooked path lies ahead. The bill goes to the House for consideration. The Senate will duplicate the committee discussion and if it advances the bill, debate it as well.

As unbelievably un-American as it is, this process is advancing in the GOP majority legislature in Concord. The Republicans may well be willing to create unequal classes of citizens where there was one. They would regress to stripping existing rights from homosexuals, including writing in law permission to discriminate in housing and employment and otherwise by producing a lesser civil-union class than existed before marriage equality passed.

This seemingly vindictive anti-gay process would make a third class of adult citizen. Heterosexuals, who marry or not, can or do reproduce or not, divorce or not, are in one group. The married homosexual couples are in another, and so far at least, won't lose their status and many benefits of the married are in another. Then under the new version, the lesser civil unions have only the privileges that employers and others might graciously grant them...at least temporarily. Un-American? No bet!

Note the lunacy and illogic in the bills preamble, including:

The vast majority of children are conceived by acts of passion between men and women – sometimes unintentionally. Because of this biological reality, New Hampshire has a unique, distinct, and compelling interest in promoting stable and committed marital unions between opposite-sex couples so as to increase the likelihood that children will be born to and raised by both of their natural parents. No other domestic relationship presents the same level of state interest.

Straight couples who don't have kids or adopt or can give birth or some other very common circumstance are not punished. That's reserved for homosexuals. Let's not even get into the awful situations many two-parent families visit on their kids in terms of alcoholism, other drug problems, and abuse physical, sexual and psychological. Nice job, GOP law crafters.

It's all too cruel and stupid. Taking away existing rights from an entire class of people is a disgrace. It also turns NH's motto backward. They'll need a new one, one that says nothing about freedom.

MA GOP Scorching Itself

2011-10-19T15:07:00.000-04:00

The clichéd 15 minutes of fame seemed to have been 1,500 pages of infamy instead. A huge number of right-wing media, including blogs, jumped on Elizabeth Warren, Left Ahead and me following last Friday’s show and podcast. A search for “elizabeth warren” “hick” will turn up tens of thousands of fresh (in every sense) hits.

For anyone who hasn’t yet heard the very widely disseminated clips of her and me, it starts near the beginning of the 40-minute show. Click the player below to start it.

Cross-post: This originally appeared at Left Ahead.

She and I share a few traits unusual and remarkable in these parts. We were both born in Oklahoma (I also spent much of my youth in West Virginia where my mother’s family was) and since moving to the Boston area (32 years ago for me and 17 for her), we’ve heard repeatedly that we were hicks for our backgrounds. I have also heard assertions that everyone in WV is a hick, hillbilly, toothless, dumb and likely the product of incest. Way to stay classy, Boston. On her part, I have been reading and hearing the no-win vise — she’s “not one of us” because she’s not a lifelong resident as well as from a hick state, and on the other hand, she and her husband have taught at Harvard for 17 years, so they are elitist snobs.

I opened the conversation with that dichotomy. She responded jovially, noting that she was aware of that Catch-22 game. She said that she must be a new category, “an elite hick.” Shortly after, she said to one of my comments about my background, “I’m going for the hick vote here. I just want you to know. Maybe we could start wearing stickers that say ‘HICKS FOR ELIZABETH’. Could we do that?”

After the absurd MA GOP and conservative responses, I might order up some of those shirt and bumper stickers. Feel free to beat me to doing that.

Surely no one is surprised that FOXnews and the like tried to hurt Warren with this. They are, after all, the same sources that excused Sen. Scott Brown’s denigration of her and even his daughters publicly as just humor. They don’t understand the fundamental difference between mild self-depreciation and knocking someone else down to appear clever.

Some of us were surprised though by the MA GOP’s effort to blow this into a big deal. Chair Jennifer Nassour is leaving. The release on it came from Communications Manager Tim Buckley, who had the unenviable task of playing the jerk in the release they emailed (not on the site yet). His paragraph before a link to a Politico piece on the podcast quotes himself as:

“Professor Warren’s insulting use of the word ‘hick’ offers a revealing prism into her elitist and arrogant worldview. Massachusetts voters deserve an explanation about just who Professor Warren was referring to when she spoke of winning the ‘hick vote.’”

Disclaimer: I have invited MA GOP head Jennifer Nassour on our show by email, voice mail, and twice face to face. Both times we chatted in person over the past year and one half, she pressed her card on me, took mine, said she’d love to do the show and to contact her office to arrange it. She or a handler seemed to have decided that was not a good idea, even knowing we’d had John Walsh, her Dem counterpart, on a couple of times. Now she’s announced she’s stepping down. I tried.

Sensible folk are ridiculing the winger/MassGOP efforts, as in Mediaite calling them humor-challenged and NECN’s Jim Braude saying their bluster was pathetic.

Lynne, Ryan and I have been kicking around the spasm of coverage. We each figure the craziness only helps her. I see a lot of traffic going to the show both on BlogTalkRadio and Left Ahead. Anyone who listens knows quickly that she was cool about the hick talk, reflecting on her and me only. Moreover with the many, many extra listens, people who otherwise were not aware of the show or her strong set of problem ID/solutions are now. As Lynne said, it looks like the MA GOP wants to help Warren as much a possible.

Being an anal-retentive, research-oriented type, I also went through even the right-wing news-like sites and blogs for comments. There, many said they’d never vote for her, but nothing lost. They typically indicated they hated Dems, progressives and liberals, and some even had harsh comments relating to women, lesbians and some coarse lingo for female body parts. Plus, quite a few made the point they were not from Massachusetts (with the thank God implied).

This appears to be a bungled effort from the right to smear Warren and likely do balancing damage control for Brown’s numerous public errors. Net, I figure they failed. A couple thousand extra MA voters and possible contributors here and elsewhere know Warren’s priorities. They can contrast an incumbent who says he doesn’t know the solutions to joblessness and such, with one providing solid proposals.

I still expect her presence in the Dem primary process and, should she advance the 2012 Senate race, will put ideas and solutions on the table and elevate the dialog. People here will get a choice.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, Left Ahead, U.S. Senate, Left Ahead, MassGOP, hick

Chatting Up Elizabeth Warren

2011-10-15T10:37:00.000-04:00

We had a good time with Elizabeth Warren on Left Ahead yesterday. That's odd in that we asked and she addressed nasty issues — unemployment, crumbling bridges, economic morass.

Go to enough debate-like events and speak to enough pols, then you surely will gravitate to those who seem like the best ones to share a meal or drink with. She's in that class, at once funny and insightful. She doesn't speak in clichés, doesn't constantly circle back to repeat herself, and doesn't go for generalities.

Her 40-minute show was one of our better one. I've been shilling it and shall put a player here too.

My comments on Left Ahead follow as teasers.

With a charming blend of confidence and self-effacement, U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren handled all the three of us could throw her way in a half hour. Listen with the player below or download and play for the whole show.

We tried to cover some areas we had not seen her run through in her many recent appearances on news shows and debate-like events. We did concentrate on economic issues and her seven priorities for rebuilding the American middle class.

She can be colorful and trotted out a few metaphors she uses in stump speeches. “The house is on fire,” she said of the U.S. economy and its effect on the lower and middle classes. She presented a variety of solutions. That is a clear distinction between her and other Dem and GOP candidates for next year’s election. She defines herself as “a straight-up-the-middle gal,” and makes strong proposals.

Listen in as she answers in the affirmative when asked whether we needed an NRA/WPA-style effort to restart the economy. She explained how setting unemployed American, both in construction and the education and municipal sectors, to work immediately can create cash flow to inspire business rebulding and expansion, as well as repairing our crumbling infrastructure.

Asked bluntly whether she saw herself as a new version of the lion of the Senate as the driven Edward Kennedy was, she almost repliled yes. She spoke of meeting Ted meaningfully for the first time and getting a commitment from him to propel major legislation, on top of his already massive commitments. She said that was an inspiration for her and she tries to live it.

She was never short of humor either. For one example, asked about being derided by opponents for being from Oklahoma and on the other hand spending the past 17 years teaching at Harvard, she said, “I’m a new category, an elite hick.”

Warren sees possibities for important legislation passing, even with the existing filibuster potential and GOP blocking. Listen in as she defines how she got her consumer finance legislation enacted over dire predictions of failure. She describes being clear on the message, describing the issues, and getting a lot of people to go with it. “When people get engaged, yes, the Senate can move,” she told us.

Short-term, she also sees tough challenges as well as such potential. For one, she describes he current effort to roll back health-care gains passed recently. That would include overturning prohibitions on pre-existing conditions and coverage for students under 26 on parents’ plan and annual wellness checks (physicals) for seniors.

Warren was plain that her deciding to run was not for the glory or power of being in the Senate. “I’m running because there are things I want to change.”

By the bye, I've also tried to invite other candidates for the seat, including Alan Khazei. His campaign has not yet responded to email or voice mail requests. Of course, his folk are under no obligation to yet another blogger/podcaster set. However, it is refreshing that Warren and another not-all-that-young woman candidate have.

Suzanne Lee, running for Boston City Council from District 2 was on and likewise held forth well. She also has very savvy with online use, including an excellent website and social media handling. We are not at a point where net presence makes or breaks elections, but we're getting there. Including such in a campaign speaks well of candidates' smarts, or at least those of their minions.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, Left Ahead, U.S. Senate

Elizabeth Warren on Left Ahead 10/14

2011-10-13T18:42:00.000-04:00

U.S. Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren talks populism, economy, Congress, politics, and well, Elizabeth Warren, with us tomorrow Friday, October 14th at 1 PM Eastern. If you can catch the show live go here.

Her conversation will be available afterward on demand to hear or download at that URL, at Left Ahead, or on iTunes.

We’ll talk her campaign, her platform, and whether she can pitch problem/solution candidacy in this era of sound bites and generalizations. She’s shooting like a meteor across a dark nation, state and time. Many in both major parties want her to burn out. We’ll ask about the pressures and promises.

Warren and Occupy Catch-22

2011-10-13T18:06:00.000-04:00

As new as both are to public consciousness, the judgments of Elizabeth and Occupy Wall St. are rampant...and particularly hostile. I've avoided mentioning them because there's already so much in electrons and ink on each.

Though a common factor is that the open hostility is evident even among allegedly left-leaning media, including blogs. The desire to see Warren and OWS failures includes denials of their essences.

Warren. Up here in the Boston area, her many detractors trip all over their tropes. Temporally alone, their arguments for her unworthiness leave her no winnable option. She's been here too long and simultaneously too short.

As in most provincial locales, the too-short argument starts with, "She's not from here." True enough, Warren's birthplace is Oklahoma. I don't find that in itself damning, perhaps because mine is as well. In her case, she went through high school there before getting degrees in public universities in several states.

Somehow the inference in not-born-here is she can't be one of us, can't understand us or our problems, and is an outsider trying to take a political job that should belong to a born-in-Boston-damn-it local.

At the same time, winger media and blogs are full of elitist slurs. Here, time factors as well, but on the other end of the seesaw of illogic. Because she and her husband have lived in Cambridge and taught at Harvard Law for 17 years, she's been there too long.

While there are those who might dare to say they want a Senator who is provably smart, Somehow, teaching at Harvard is supposed to disqualify Warren...from something unspecified.

Less than a lifetime here is not long enough. More than a few years at Harvard is too long.

OWS/Occupy Boston. I was going to limit any comments about the Occupy folk to a couple of Left Ahead podcasts. The loonies just won't let it be though.

Go to literally any newspaper or broadcast outlet in the past couple of weeks to get the gist. A very informal and originally inchoate protest action emanating from occupywallst.org pissed off far more than corporate apologists and extremists on the right.

Here the Catch-22 is that the nascent, truly grassroots protest was not credible simply because it was not a highly organized, well stratified one with a list of specific demands and goals — think a major political party's platform after the convention process. Again, again and yet again, I'd read or hear the dismissive assertion that a formal structure and clearly agreed to position, OWS was chaotic, impotent and dilettantish.

That crazy talk is toning down considerably now, and not because there is an OWS manifesto held up by an elected leadership. Instead, there's an Occupy Boston and over 100 other similar protests. Suddenly it has become plain that this set of mad-as-hell-and-not-going-to-take-it-anymore folk are in fact a movement.

This long overdue reaction to the abuses of financial and other large business corporations is not aimless, formless and ephemeral. As it became increasingly clear that the protesters were not all young trust-fund types, rather veterans and seniors joined them, the inane dismissals dwindle. The Catch-22 folk are having to find other spurious claims to denigrate it.

One might think that the Tea Party folk, libertarians and others who assert paternal and interventionist government policies are evil incarnate would grok OWS. One would be wrong. That in part is likely due to NIH, not-invented-here, syndrome.

Likewise, one would suppose that those often self-righteous agitators would actively support OWS free speech and increasingly focused protest points. That should be singularly true in Boston, of the pre-Revolutionary War rabble-rousers like the Adams boys. Instead, our Mayor Tom Menino says he agrees with many of the OWS and Occupy Boston aims, but he still worked with the police to arrest and roust the encampment here with flaccid reasoning about costing the city money, hurting the Greenway plantings, and the mythical bugbears of a century ago, anarchists, plotting in the camps. Cut us a very thin slice of that baloney.

Fresh Noise

If you want real news, you apparently have to wait for the media, including most bloggers, to rouse themselves and begin thinking. The galumphing herd eager to smear Warren and the Occupiers has been terribly influential.

As Warren speaks in those debate-like performances of 60-second answers to clichéd and cutesy queries, we are hearing the unheard of — problems identified with solutions advanced. Likewise, as OWS and its dandelion-like spouts from its many seeds flourish, we hear with increasing clarity what is wrong and what will right it.

This has been a shameful period for the news, which became the noise. Let us hope that the press in all its forms emerges chastened a bit. Let us hope the papers, talking heads, and we feeble if vain bloggers are more observant after these stumbles.

The Incredible TBD Power of Southie

2011-10-10T10:39:00.001-04:00

The allegedly politically monolithic South Boston neighborhood gets real contests next month. A district and at-large battle should show if zip-code voting is the most important factor.

Of course, South Boston is not the only provincial area of this city, commonwealth and region. It is special more in that it tends to have a higher than average voting rate and that many of its residents share color, culture and church. So, they are more likely to be a bloc for "one of us."

Understandably in a neighborhood that long had a lower family income and perceived status than much of town, there's pride in holding Congressional, General Court, and Council seats...forever and ever. Even as Southie became part of Council District 2, it retained the power. There simply are more voting residents than in the combined South End and Chinatown. Plus, those neighborhoods are more diverse and much less likely to do the zip-code and us-v.-them at election time.

When parochial pride battles evident self-interest, pride has almost always won here. This time though there are two skirmishes that might break that pattern...at least with reinforcements from other neighborhoods.

So Don't I

So, there's District 2 incumbent Bill Linehan. He's the Irish American there, or just Irish, as those in Southie have it, against Chinese-American Suzanne Lee. She's had a long career as school principal and respected, effective avocation as community activist. He was a long-time manager in Parks and a bureaucrat for the city's COO before starting two terms as Councilor. He plugged in as replacement when Jim Kelly died.

There are major obvious differences. He believes in constituent services, but sits and waits for folk to call him; she would patrol the whole district looking for problems to ID and solve. You can learn all you need to know about what she's done and wants to accomplish from her campaign site; you could stare at his one-page placeholder and not know more about him than when you loaded the URL. She's all problem/solutions; he's a pleasant enough fellow.

This is identity politics at its plainest. For Southie, there's someone who looks like them and lives where they do versus someone born in China, who lives in the Asian-dominated part of the district.

Yet, this is also a choice of change and leadership and energy. Over at Left Ahead, we spoke with Lee, a show you can hear here. Voters who pay any attention at the forums to stump speeches and in media know he's pretty much a low-key paper pusher and she's, as the cliché goes, a change agent. Status quo lovers are not going to want Lee.

The two major local dailies have each run pieces suggesting that South Boston will be determined to hold onto this Council seat, and will turn out to do that. This conflicts with electoral history that predicts very low turnout for year with no mayoral, gubernatorial or congressional contests.

Political folk wisdom has it that shoe leather wins such races. Lee seems to have worn out many heels and soles in all parts of the district. As much as I'd like to think that willingness to propose solutions, eagerness to appear in public and in media, online presence including social media, and a history of doing good things for large number of residents would rule, it may or may not here. Lee has decided advantages in all those aspects, but she is not a life-long Southie resident and arrived in Boston from the wrong direction.

Muscle Test

That Michael Flaherty fellow is another matter. Sure, he's of Irish extraction and from South Boston, where he maintains a strong supporter base. He also proved himself a great fund-raiser when he was at-large Councilor and Council President. He's a connected lawyer and not unimportant, he's charming.

He also seems to have annoyed the devil out of Mayor Tom Menino for a long time and more recently the at-large incumbents. The former is particularly important in that Menino is extraordinarily popular, even in this day of hate-the-pols, and he has foot soldiers the inspire support, donations and GOTV.

After being unable to unseat Menino in the last mayoral, Flaherty wants back in. His entry would be one of the four incumbents. At Left Ahead, we spoke with him and the incumbents and shall try to squeeze in a couple related shows this month. You can go here for links to the at-large candidates' shows.

Back to conventional political wisdom, Flaherty's best shot supposedly would be to pick off one of the first-termers, Ayanna Pressley or Felix Arroyo. So far, he's doing a nice job raising money, but all four incumbents have base supporters and solid roles on Council. No one dislikes or distrusts any of the incumbents or feels underserved.

As in District 2, turnout more than shoe leather may make this race. There was no preliminary, just a truncated run for November 8th. The debate-like-events have only recently started. Because these slots are citywide, getting supporters to the polls is crucial and even harder than in a district race.

The great pro here, Menino, said that plainly last week when he introduced Pressley at a meet-and-greet for her at Townsend's in his and my shared neighborhood of Hyde Park. He asked people to volunteer for her "as a favor to me." He put it right out there with,"She's only been in office 20 months. She hasn't had time to build a machine. We gotta build a team for her."

That's very Boston and the kind of insight you expect from such a skilled pol. So for the two new at-large incumbents, the question may be whether their machines work well enough to overpower what may be a rusty version run by Flaherty.

District 2 and at-large are where the action will be on November 8th.

Tags: massmarrier, Boston, City Council, District 2, Linehan, Suzanne Lee, at-large, Arroyo, Connolly, Flaherty, Murphy, Pressley, elections

Love and Marriage in Iberia

2011-10-09T09:15:00.000-04:00

I generally believe folk can find plenty of note on their own. So, I don't often point. I'll make an exception for Frank Bruni's NYT op-ed today.

He describes the quick evolution of same-sex marriage in Portugal. Not unusual is that among the nations with marriage equality, it too is a largely Roman Catholic one. It seems the leaders in such countries can take New Testament teachings of treating others with love and respect, as well as following the Golden Rule.

Predominately Christian inhabited nations from Norway to South Africa somehow evolved beyond Leviticus. They don't narrowly select Old Testament snippets to support very unChristian beliefs.

Before munching Bruni's offering, click on the graphic to pop up the three-tiered world of gay relations. A teaser of it is here to inspire you.

It includes the 10 nations with marriage equality (of course, to our disgrace, we are not yet among them). It also includes those places where gay male relationships bring a 10-year or greater prison sentence, and those where being homosexual still means a death sentence.

How's civilized in this shared world?

Bruni came away from his conversations and more academic look at Portugal believing that the legalization means "same-sex marriage became a badge of sophistication, affirming their country as an enlightened place."

Brown Could Use a Helper

2011-10-07T07:04:00.001-04:00

Sen. Scott Brown's only-the-latest crass sexist blunder is disquieting. He's certainly not the only federal legislator who runs down women or some other group so long as he can make a puerile joke. Yuck yuck.

Heck, various Senators and Representatives as well as Governors and other pols do much the same.

Brown would like to be known as the deal maker-or-breaker in the Senate. Instead, the first associations will such as insulting a middle-aged woman's looks and offering his daughters to anyone interested. Just joking, ha ha ha ha, he said. In the case of his daughters, both they and his wife seemed used to such deprecating humor from their reactions in the vid.

Let's set aside whether he is a hard-body-only guy or thinks unmarried women are chattel. Instead, what about his executive function, you know, the key role of the mature brain that governs our thoughts and actions? As adults, we normally develop a cause-and-effect understanding that keeps us from, among other misdeeds, social blunders.

He doesn't appear to have a ripe one.

Long ago, in puberty in fact, I lost patience with the insulters. Those who say cruel and malicious comments about and in the presence of others — including but not limited to slurs on race, sexual orientation, gender or religion. Often then they'll grin and say something like, "Oh, I don't mean nothing by it."

The aw shucks disclaimer didn't cut it when I was a teen and still doesn't. Get a grip on your base impulses!

U.S.Senators often serve decades. Everything they say and do publicly is likely news. If Brown's brain can't control itself, perhaps he needs to find another job.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, insults, Brown, U.S. Senate

Pressley Does Hyde Park

2011-10-06T10:12:00.000-04:00

The end of the out-in-the-world day for most of us was another stop without rest for the at-large Boston Councilors. Last evening at Townsend's City Hall machers showed to tease each other and praise Ayanna Pressley. Then for her and Steve Murphy, it was immediately careering from one to two to three candidate forums.

As Murphy told me, the various neighborhood groups generally don't communicate or coordinate and end up cannibalizing each other's events. The seven at-large for the four spots race to as many of these as they can. Mayor Tom Menino had advice for them last night — "Drive fast!"

It's no surprise that other Councilors call for Pressley's reelection. Last night, District 5's Rob Consalvo, of course, showed as Hyde Park is his turf. He led in layering on Ayanna's virtues, followed by Murphy and Menino.

The surprise is that so far there's no every-pol-for-self mentality. Conventional wisdom was that with four incumbents and three challengers for the four desks, there'd be divisions. Moreover, former Council President Michael Flaherty wants back in and the same punditry would have him trying to knock off one of the two first-termers, Pressley or Felix Arroyo.

Without a preliminary and going straight for a November 8th final, this race has been quiet. That's over and the next five weeks should exhaust all of them.

The sweetness that pleased the crowd was not the peer praise though. Pressley described to me and then to the room of maybe 100 that she was moved that a young fan had her mother bring her. A 7-year-old girl had interviewed her for her school newspaper and in doing it proved the worth of Pressley's efforts to inspire. The girl now figures she has a goal and a good shot at it. Pressley noted that the mother had groomed the girl for the interview, including braided hair. Then after the young reporter saw her, she announced to her mother than she too wanted big hair, like Pressley's. She had it last night, surely not the only aspect of her idol she'll emulate.

I think I've atoned enough for questioning whether Pressley could make her transition from big-issue, national politicking to the city level. As the trio of praising pols said last night, she does constituent issues but has brought in major concerns, most obviously in starting a Council committee, Women & Healthy Communities. As her Council page puts it, "The committee is primarily concerned with adequate delivery of city services and programming for youth, families, seniors and new Bostonians, with particular focus on girls and women. Some of the issues the committee plans to address over the next two years include domestic and sexual violence, child abuse and neglect, bullying, substance abuse, mentoring, hunger and homelessness." As is her style, that does not substitute for regular tasks. She just piles those on top.

Tag Team Lauding

The floor show was good last night. It ran from fast-talking Consalvo (Menino teased him as still being in his auctioneer mode from the Y fundraiser) to self-effacing Murphy to the quipping Mayor. Consalvo captured the salient points: 1) She hit the ground running, 2) She tackles the tough issues, 3) She's a great team member. Then Murphy got right to the point, alluding to the peril of a first termer, He called for everyone in the room to work for Pressley's reelection.

Menino was candid as ever too. He introduced her and set it up with "She's only been in office 20 months. She hasn't had time to build a machine. We gotta build a team for her." He asked for people to put in as much time as they could, even if it was only a few hours, "as a favor to me."

Recurring themes among the three Pressley praisers included how the Council, and particularly the at-large members, acted as a team and worked through their disagreements. From my perspective of 30 some years, I agree that this Council as a group is smarter and far less zip-code and voter-identity stifled than I was used to seeing.

So far, none of the at-large incumbents is making any break with this unofficial slate for reelection. That may be in part because each has a personal record and emphasis. Murphy is the money wiz, John Connolly does schools, Arroyo is housing and unions, and Pressley women/girls, violence and poverty (big and complex). Unlike the overt and not too effective Team Unity of a few years ago when all the Councilors of color sort of worked on a few things together, these at-larges seem to be cooperators instead of collaborators. Their working together and public respect may well last five more weeks and beyond.

Matured Campaigner

When Pressley spoke, she held the floor better than anyone. I've seen and heard her a few times, but must say that she's fully come into her own with her stump speech. She could persuade nearly any voter who hears her in person.(Gosh, it's been two years since she first joined us on Left Ahead. She was convincing then, but is much more confident and powerful now. She discussed this pending race four months ago.)

She stood straight and gesticulated almost like a t'ai chi master as she spoke to the lessons she carried forward from her recently deceased mother. She was totally believable when saying, "I love what I do. I get to actualize my values every day."

As far as she's concerned "Municipal government is not the lowest rung of power." She's been applying city resources and acts on those big concerns, like poverty and violence. To her, a key rhetorical question is, "Who has the monopoly on big-heart issues?"

Tags: massmarrier, Boston, City Council, Pressley, at-large, Menino, Consalvo, Murphy

At-Large Signs and Sighs

2011-09-30T08:02:00.000-04:00

Having gotten called out before when donating to or volunteering for candidates, I try my best not to do either. I do endorse here and sometimes at Left Ahead, but I can't feign objectivity if I'm kicking in actively.

My middle ground is yard signs, which seem to me to fall in the endorsement camp. Those for Deval Patrick, Barack Obama, and my three reformers last time — Grossman, Henderson and Bump — were pounded or pricked into our Fairmount Hill soil. I figured I could do the same for the at-large Council this time, as I've repeatedly declared it the exciting race in this off-year election with no big national or state contests.

No so fast, bucko.

Now it is possible some of the other candidates can sway me as the debate/forum season cranks up before November 8th. For example, I personally like Michael Flaherty, but he'll have to come up with new compelling programs and reasons to bump any of the four incumbents.

With that in mind, I responded when I saw a request from Felix Arroyo's campaign to put up a sign. My affirmative electrons were on their way. Within a few hours, I returned from a long bike ride to find the campaign elves had visited.

Now I wonder whether his team's efficiency is an indication of just their enthusiasm or perhaps also of how well he organizes. As I'd welcome the other three incumbents' signs, I quickly contacted all three campaigns via their websites.

I am waiting for responses from two and for the physical sign from one, a week later. John Connolly's campaign responded very quickly with, "Mike, Thanks. We will definitely take you up on your offer. I've copied our field directors (two names)." Steve Murphy and Ayanna Pressley's folk have not replied or shown up with any sticks and posters.

Reasons might be that they are busy with more important tasks, that they are either confident in lower Hyde Park or that they are going into denser areas first, or even that they prefer signs on main drags. Who knows?

Honestly I wouldn't mind a mini-forest of these for the six weeks. I'll keep looking. I might have let my single request to each campaign be it, but next Wednesday I intend to slide down the hill to Pressley's neighborhood meet-and-greet, where Murphy will also attend. I'm sure I'll tease each of them.

Murphy is a neighbor, two blocks away. His campaign may feel no need to hurry or respond at all. Fairmount Hill is splotched with his red-and-white signs, a huge one at Beacon and Fairmount and small up and down the East/West streets.

My Arroyo sign is the only one I've seen for the other three on the hill. As someone who works the elections as a warden or clerk, I know the locals vote. It seems that candidates would like to ensure name recognition.

I'll update this when and if the other three campaigns respond.

Friday Late Morning Update: Half way there and in step with the neighborhood. The Murphy folk drove in a sign. Still no response from Pressley and a promise but no sign from Connolly.

Saturday Pre-Dawn Update: Two surprises displayed when I went out for the papers. Bad was a UPS package that came after dinner, without a door bell, and was sodden from being on the stoop all night. Good was that Connolly's gnomes had come in stealth mode in the dark. I'm three quarters there and have even less to whine about.

Monday PM Update: And now there are four. Now the incumbents' signs line up like Councilors' desks in the fifth-floor chamber. The Pressley guy showed up, popped his trunk, whipped out the sign and hammer. Now I shall have to find something else for complaint. Oh, I know, when are we going to have a series of at-large debates?

Tags: massmarrier, Boston, City Council, yard signs, at-large, Arroyo, Connolly, Flaherty, Murphy,Pressley, elections

Social and Asocial in District 2

2011-09-29T19:57:00.000-04:00

Incumbent District Councilor Bill Linehan may or may not be suited to his largest group of constituents in South Boston. Judging only by his hostility toward and ignorance of social media, he's waaaaay out of step with the 21st Century.

I had that sense when I looked around for the three candidates' presence on the web a couple of months ago and regularly since. The short of it is that knocked-out-in-the-preliminary Bob Ferrara was never serious. He had no website, only a Facebook page, and even that listed only vague self-employed info and showed his interest in youth lacrosse and football. There wasn't a word about his alleged race.

Linehan and Lee are close in age, but really he is much, much older. The real alter kaker types, like Dapper O'Neil, Fred Langone and Jim Kelly, are dead. Yet, there is still a place in Southie politics for the Abe Simpson types. Linehan may be the last or he may have outrun the genre.

That's long been plain. Yet I was still surprised to see the Globe quote him as the old fart. It seems someone spoofed a Twitter account, LinehanD2Boston, promoting him. It isn't malicious, points to his campaign, and looks like what he could do if he was not such a fuddy-duddy.

Instead, he responded, “It’s not me, I don’t have a Twitter account,” Linehan said today. “Now people are starting to follow me. That concerns me. It’s not me.” It sure isn't he. Linehan seems to channel Google's big shots with, "I’m opposed to participating in systems that allow people to be anonymous."

For a flavor of what a creaker he is, consider that he and Lee are of similar age, but she did not freeze 30 years ago. She has a detailed, sophisticated campaign site. He has a slapdash stub that gives no reason to vote for him. She tweets while he is offended by the idea of it. He has a Facebook page apparently created by one of his daughters that carries almost entirely his scheduling stuff. She has a Facebook presence that flows to and from her campaign site, is rife with pix and personal comments and reasons to support her.

Originally, I was going to compare online efforts as I did with the at-large candidates. There was no sense in that for District 2. She groks them. He doesn't. Ferrara wasn't even playing.

As I noted in the at-large piece, internet savvy is not likely to win this race. The cliché would have it that the nice, smart Asian-American lady is great, but she is not from Southie. Identity politics would have all of South Boston voting for the person who looks most like them, who was born there, and that ethnic and neighborhood markers are all that matters. As South Boston voters outnumber Chinatown and South End ones about two to one, that's that.

The results of the preliminary put her ahead, but Ferrara split the South Boston vote. What's most fascinating here will be whether 1) South End and Chinatown voters turn out adequately to support Lee and 2) South Bostonians vote against their self-interest by going only for the candidate who looks most like them.

This time though, first-time candidate Lee offers huge differences. First consider that Linehan is a one-note symphony. He does constituent services. Call or visit him and you're likely to get your little thing. OK, that's essential to a Councilor's job. She promises to beat him even in his sole virtue. She'll go out to all the neighborhoods, find the problems and fix them without waiting passively for the call. Then for the real stuff, she defines a broad set of platforms in nine areas, most with solutions that should resonate with anyone who reads or hears them.

She's also ringing the bells and going smile and hand clasps with all three major parts of the district. Another cliché long before Facebook is that shoe leather wins local elections. She's wearing out shoes and seemingly has an endless supply of smiles and answers.

So far, there's been no comparison. I've wanted to chart 'em up and see who's got the goods. He hasn't show squat.

I'll head to what debates and forums I know about, hoping that he has more than a bureaucrat's drone. Meanwhile, conventional wisdom would have South Boston going for the native son just to pretend that this is better for them than a Councilor with platform planks that will help them.

I honestly don't know how this will play out.

Tags: massmarrier, Boston, City Council, District 2, Suzanne Lee, Bill Linehan, social media

Casinos Wagging the Legislature

2011-09-29T09:14:00.000-04:00

They just can't help themselves. While the bluster and posturing over casinos in MA rule our state house, the corruption queue is already crowded. For whatever good remains from Gov. Deval Patrick's tenure, this will be his stigma, his disgrace.

In a telling coincidence, just as the legislators were guaranteeing that gambling interests could buy them, a few hundred yards away, a casinos expert was explaining the only ways to do this right.

As a disclaimer, I'm no fan of casinos. Here and at Left Ahead, I've written and spoken against them. This week's LA show by Ryan Adams and me covers this again.

Down on Tremont St. at a Suffolk Law Rappaport Center round table on gambling, William Eadington sketched the wrong ways and best practices to gambling planning and regulation. We're doing it wrong so far and look headed further down that path.

The UNR professor has made a career of studying gambling, written numerous books and studies on casinos and addiction, and analyzed the devil out of the subject. Other than being a strong advocate for the gambling addicted, he is agnostic about casinos. He sees them as current reality (half of our states have them as well as many foreign cities and countries) and when a jurisdiction legalizes them, his concern is being smart about it.

We aren't. By his criteria, we are already blowing one of the two main rules. We don't have a system that will guarantee integrity and we haven't figured out what we want from casinos. We haven't even legalized it yet and we are already in trouble.

Eadington's message includes:

Don't advance without defining and prioritizing what you expect from allowing casinos
Have a gaming commission planning, implementing and regulating casinos with only the highest integrity and greatest disinterest among its members
Spend the years gathering proposals and picking those that meet your goals long before choosing a site or specific developer

To illustrate how pathetically we are failing here, consider yesterday's decision in Senate debates to reject member Jamie Eldridge's minimalist amendment requiring a five-year waiting period after leaving the legislature before being employed by casino interests. Instead, the approved amendment is for a meaningless one-year ban. Today;'s Globe editorial slamming this intended institutionalization of a revolving door for legislators is spot on. Have we learned nothing from the indictments and jail sentences for corruption?

For casino goals, Eadington compared good and bad implementations in the U.S. and beyond. He made it plain that expecting them to solve the jurisdiction's financial problems is foolish and won't happen.

He did point to some smart goals that work well and noted that each took very different paths to implementation related to the priorities. For one, Pennsylvania decided it wanted to maximize tax revenue and set a high rate on winnings. It ended up doing that with only a few casinos.

In contrast, Singapore started with a prime minister very opposed to gambling, one who came around after many years admitting it was the way of the 21st century and that they had to do it right. There, they required a request for concept from future bidders and carefully considered what the resulting sites would mean. In a six-year process, they went with a majestic $5 billion plus resort that would bring tourists in for vacations, not just a gambling fix. Their laws let them exclude problem gamblers, felons and others, as well as charging nationals $100 to walk in the door ($2,000 a year). They extract a much lower, tiered tax on winnings. Their implementation has truly made this a destination, not preyed on locals, and been a huge boost to the economy. Melbourne acted similarly and revitalized a massive slum area in the process.

Here, so far there is no indication that we intend to do this right or that we are capable of that. The legislature has already shown as a body that it has self-interest at heart. The siting proposals so far seem intended to suck money from locals, not create destinations for vacations for tourists. We're about the slots and quick-trip gambling that is so destructive to local economies and residents.

On this path, the likelihood will be short-term construction jobs, pissant service jobs added in the future, and most profits going out of state and maybe out of country to the gambling corporations. Once we enable casinos, there is no way to retreat. We have a single shot at going this right. No one from the Patrick administration or either house seems to be aiming.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, casinos, gambling, Eadington, Eldridge

Boston District with Real Choice

2011-09-28T07:19:00.001-04:00

Not much may be enough. TBD.

Uneasy must the head of Suzanne Lee lie. Prima facie, she whipped incumbent Boston City Councilor Bill Linehan yesterday. What can we learn from this? What will the result November show of Boston 2011?

The numbers look encouraging for never-run-for-office-before and long-time educator/community activist Lee:

Percent

Candidate

Votes

39.12

Suzanne Lee

2606

35.03

Bill Linehan

2334

25.35

Bob Ferrara

1689

0.5

write-in

District 2 is one of the truly diverse ones in town. The final on this one is likely to bring culture, race, class and neighborhoods to bear. There's no question that Lee's the superior candidate and should win. There's considerable question about the outcome. It is likely to depend much more on GOTV efforts and parochialism than ideas or real self-interest.

By the bye, we have not spoken with Linehan or Ferrara, but did have Lee on Left Ahead recently. You can catch her half-hour podcast here.

This race has a wide bifurcation. Incumbent Linehan is a life-long resident of Southie. He was a perfectly good Parks employee for decades. As a Councilor he has been all about constituent services, one of the key functions of the office. As a pol, he's all about I'm one of you. That is damned significant in South Boston, which tends to have a high election turnout.

Plus, the district is about 65% white. The majority of voters are in South Boston. D2 also has the South End, Chinatown, South Bay and a snatch of Roxbury. By the bye, the South End News calculates turnout at 13%, which embarrassingly enough is not bad for such a preliminary with no big races. (Afternoon update, Chris Lovett has posted breakdown figures for where the votes came from for all three candidates.)

On the other fork, Lee is an actual doer. She turned around one awful city school and then ran the premier elementary (Quincy) for over a decade. During that time, she developed multiple master plans for neighborhoods and drove numerous projects that improved Bostonians' lives.

You can get a full and fair contrast of the pair at their campaign sites. First note that I'm known to get excited about online presentation and social media. Linehan is a dud at both, which may not be too big an issue in a local campaign centered on South Boston, where identity politics have long been more powerful than ideas.

One of Linehan's daughters seems to dabble in net stuff. She apparently set up a kind of shell Facebook page for the campaign. It's an open group with next to no content. She or who knows who slapped together a campaign site, which is hard to find and not linked from his group page or his frail personal FB one. Pretty much, like Gertrude wrote of Oakland, there is no there there.

You say you want to know his positions, platforms and plans? Well, I guess you'd better call him or get to a candidate forum. He's not saying.

Lee, on the other hand, is out there. Her campaign site leaves no doubt about what she's about, what issues would drive her in office. She is very specific on her proposals in each of nine areas.

For yesterday's votes, we have Linehan commenting to the Globe that he was number two on the preliminary when he first ran for the seat, to win in the end. He said that the South End and Chinatown also turned out for the preliminary and he'd have to rally his supporters in all three neighborhoods.

Ever backroom minded Phoenix writer David Bernstein had his own tweet about the outcome — Linehan alienated both Menino and Flaherty during their mayoral battle -- and paid a price today. So there is that atavistic belief that only machine politics can win locals here. Menino has ground troops and many said and wrote that youth-sports organizer Ferrara was Flaherty's surrogate to split to vote in Southie.

Ideas or Identity

So the simple-minded future would have a larger turnout for the final and every Southie vote going for the Irish guy. Done and done.

I give Lee a good shot here though, considering:

She is known and respected for her work as principal in both the South End and Chinatown
She more than blunts Linehan's support for the Asian-American community; he said, while she did
She has an honest to God platform, while he's old-style and limited to fixing potholes
She is even more indefatigable than he, ringing those bells throughout this huge district

Everyone, including the candidates, is well aware of the low motivation issue. There is no statewide, mayoral or national election, only a some ballot initiatives to fire folk up. As in any municipal election, GOTV is the thing.

The complications of course here are many and not too subtle. Like those inconsiderate schlubs who stroll slowly while jaywalking to inconvenience as many drivers as possible, some Boston neighborhoods love a sense of power. South Boston has been one, as in returning the dreadful bigoted Jim Kelly to this seat numerous times. He was obnoxious, inefficient and a true insult to the district outside of Southie. They did it because they could.

Linehan is much more low-key and doesn't exhibit the worst of Kelly's traits, certainly not the anti-gay stance that Kelly finally recanted when he was dying. Yet, despite the incumbent's drabness, there is a clear choice here. Lee is an achiever, an idea and action person, with specific programs and goals to improve the lives of those in the district and whole city.

Cynic this go-round can call on the wisdom of H.L. Mencken with "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." In fact, it may play out that South Boston voters will rally behind the guy who looks like them and who lives near them. It may also happen that enough in the district are tired of the joke nature of their councilors and take the rare chance to put some muscle on the bone.

Tags: massmarrier, Boston, City Council, District 2, Suzanne Lee, Bill Linehan

Quick Kiss from Brown

2011-09-21T08:54:00.000-04:00

Get him smelling salts. How very awkward for Sen. Scott Brown The gays like him. They really like him. (At least the small group of conservative, Republican ones do.)

Praise to Politico for being at the Log Cabin Republicans awards dinner last night. He was one of two pols getting the Spirit of Lincoln thingummy in D.C. He mumbled minimal thanks and refused to talk about LGBT issues with the press. So in a way, he was covered in case LCR members might still want to contribute to his campaign.

He did eventually vote for Don't Ask Don't Tell's repeal. That was significant in that he's Republican and he's a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It's your call whether MA Dems' views that he only joined in after the issue was settled is cynical or just honest (see Politico link for quotes or the Globe coverage of Brown's LGBT record).

For that vote, Brown and Maine U.S. Sen. Susan Collins got the award. Brown also received the group's endorsement for re-election next year — not a terrific surprise as he's the sole Republican in the race.

The PR release on his award includes:

We thank Senator Brown for being on the right side of history in ending this failed policy and we are honored to present him with the Spirit of Lincoln Award. Senator Brown has proven himself to be an ally to our community whose service should be recognized, and Log Cabin Republicans are proud to call this warrior-citizen a friend.

Senator Scott Brown stated, "As I said when I voted to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell, when a soldier answers the call to serve and risks life or limb, it has never mattered to me whether they are gay or straight. My only concern has been whether their service and sacrifice is with pride and honor. I would like to thank Log Cabin Republicans for this award."

The one on the endorsement reads in part:

He has been a tremendous advocate for the people of Massachusetts and a solid ally for Log Cabin Republicans, representing the power and potential of an inclusive GOP.

Brown grabbed his award, said little, and would not answer any Politico questions as he beat an exit. As they quote him, "I'm here talking about 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' and I don't really respond to what the Democrats say. Never do." That seems along the line of, "Yes, I'll be your friend...so long as no one sees us together."

Even with the boosts of national GOP money and the terrible U.S. economy, it was very impressive for Brown to campaign well enough to grab the special election from a much better known Dem. He was an exurban state senator with an undistinguished legislative record, a who's-that? guy. Yet, he won.

Now he's clearly sweating his associations. He wants support from social conservatives and he wants it from homosexuals. He seems increasingly to alienate the Tea Party types, who remain doctrinaire. I suspect they just can't smudge the oval for him again.

Even with huge amounts of out-of-state funds from those who want to keep this symbolic seat Republican, can he appeal to enough of our 51% unenrolled voters to get a full term? I can't see his footwork being fancy enough to dance to everyone's tune.

Obsessed v. Crazy Groups

2011-09-18T10:08:00.001-04:00

The public library freebie magazine rack had the March/April issue of The Home School Court Report. I snatched it.

It and the organization, Home School Legal Defense Association, are dreadfully sincere and single-issue passionate. On the other hand, this looks like a healthy contrast to the loonies in broader parents'-rights groups. Both sorts see themselves as victims on intrusive government. Both turn to dedicated lawyers to cajole, threaten or sue for what they demand.

Huge differences are:

From the HSLDA site and magazine, their members actually are persecuted and need protection, state by state and school district by school district.
Home schoolers don't want whole new rules and procedures, just fair administration of existing laws and regulations.
Home schoolers don't claim Biblical authority.
I see no evidence that home schooler parents lie baldly, as Mad Dad and his ilk have for so long.
Home schoolers are not asking for wild legal exemptions, like the right to beat their children at will.

The short of it is that home schooling is rare enough that many government agencies and education bodies have not adapted. Cops pick up home-school kids on field trips and education tasks, arresting them as truants. Parents who follow the rules (lesson plans, testing, transcripts and so forth) still get threatened with jail and fines for neglecting their children — despite being on the right side of the laws. Some school districts even try to legislate their own requirements in violation of existing state laws.

So, the HSLDA is there with a vengeance. Flying down like Nemesis to provide retribution and right wrongs, the group's lawyers do what's necessary to straight out confused, ignorant or malicious school or government types. From reading the magazine, I think they do a damned good job of it. Certainly if I home schooled my kids, I'd belong to HSLDA.

A fleeting thought would be how nice if the parents' rights types learned how it was done from the home school ones. Alas, the parents' rights folk are not about playing by the rules, or even about honesty and honor. They demand rights that they define, rights that do not and should not exist. They want everyone else to bend to them and change the entire system to suit their emotional needs.

I do know a home school family. Their kids are well educated, measurably so. They played by the rules in California and now in Massachusetts. They aren't loud long-suffering victims, just folk who are convinced they provide a better education for their own than public schools. Their children get or will get equivalent high school diplomas and are in or headed for accredited colleges.

There's the parallel track and then there's off the rails.

Ideas v. Jive for Senate

2011-09-15T08:02:00.000-04:00

We know it's coming. When it's election time, Dems are bound to claim they trust the voters, they have faith in the collective judgment of Americans. They ignore inane and destructive, emotionally based previous results in what is a hidden plea for smart balloting based on issues.

There's probably not a lot of option here. Voters surely don't want to hear that they'd be asses to go for lies, generalities and impossibilities.

We certainly saw the absurdity of it with George Bush the Lesser. He promised guns and butter, the proverbial we're-American-we-can-have-it-all fantasy. Apparently the nation needed to hear that, to believe that. Absolutely, he told us, we can spend on the military and actual wars, while giving the richest people and companies free tax rides. Our never-ending growth spiral will make it all work. Likewise, Ronald Reagan promoted the still extant jive that if we only put more money in the accounts of the wealthiest corporations and investors, they will do the right thing, investing in their businesses, expanding jobs, and creating more consumer spending from their bigger paychecks.

You would think we would remember how those delusions worked out. As a people, we may not.

The rich as a group don't participate in the trickle-down pretense. Even in this dreadful, prolonged economic morass, they don't share the pain. They hold onto any extra tax breaks or other government dole. They don't create new jobs. They don't take a chance on expanding plants and improving infrastructure. They are happy to look to expanding markets overseas instead of ensuring a flush national set of employed consumers.

Now we have another shot, a voter IQ test as it were. Nationally, 2012 puts the POTUS' record to up and simultaneously on the MA level, a U.S. Senate seat. Voters will have before them the lies and the truth, the fantasies and the ideas. It is only a little dramatic to speak in Biblical terms, think Deuteronomy 30:19 — I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.

I honestly am not sure how emotionally needy we'll be this time, whether we can face our struggle together or will slip back into failed dreams and impossible hopes. Having spent considerable time researching Elizabeth Warren and sitting in a room for a couple of hours during her listening tour, I am sure she won't pander and lie or mumble and pretend.

Instead, in running for Senate, she could not contrast more with Sen. Scott Brown. He doesn't offer and likely doesn't have solutions (I suspect she has 30 IQ points on him). She's not about to say, "We can have it all. Trust me." She'll bring the ideas and realities directly to the debates and stump speeches.

We'll see what we in MA comprise. The results of the Dem primary will be measure one.

History stretching back at least as far as Dick Nixon shows us the hell we create with guns-and-butter fantasies. Instead, we could use a Senate rife with statesmen and visionaries, defining problems clearly and offering workable solutions.

That's Warren from what I've seen. We could use someone who lead us where we need to go and not just tell us what we feel we want to hear.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, Scott Brown, Congress, U.S. Senate

Warren Day One

2011-09-14T08:13:00.001-04:00

As I type, Elizabeth Warren allegedly is at or on the way to a T stop in Boston to (thank God, at long last, what took so long) announce she is running for the U.S. Senate from MA. This finally lets national liberal sorts get back in the game emotionally. The GOP/Tea Party types have flapped their skirts and flexed their flab over their savior du jour solo. Now it's the good guys' turn.

We just returned from three days on Block Island. We intentionally did not take a laptop or tablet and did not buy newspapers. This is an invigorating re-entry.

I have no doubt this will be both a mano a mano and simultaneously a surrogate battle. Wingers will be crazed in trying to keep the seat and lefties want some sense, smarts and a stronger majority in the Senate.

After a couple of years of disappointment in the POTUS — like rust destroying the good tools — national Dem and progressive money and energy have a target.

The best part is that scalpel-sharp Warren is bound to force Sen. Scott Brown to cut the crap. No more generalities, no more looking at the table as he mumbles clichés to voters. He'll have to put out real ideas and verifiable facts about his intentions and deeds.

Warren's entry into the pond raises the water level considerably. Voters won't have any option other than listening, thinking and choosing.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, Congress, U.S. Senate

Voter ID? We don't need no...

2011-09-07T17:22:00.000-04:00

Unlike the trend of states requiring government-issued photo ID for voting, we won't even be voting on that here. The AG's office says a ballot initiative on it would be unconstitutional.

Tip of the toupee to Adam at Universal Hub.

Numerous socially conservative states (think SC) have passed such legislation one way or another. Down in Columbia, Gov. Niki Haley poo-poo'ed obvious judgments that the law was anti-poor/anti-black in punishing people who did not have licenses or passports. She claims that nearly everyone does and make the fatuous statement that she'd drive anyone who needed to go to motor vehicles for a state ID there herself. I hope she has lots of gas and time. That would be over 178,000 sandlappers. Regardless of the BS, the feds have said show us how this won't disenfranchise large numbers of citizens. To be continued...

Here, AG Martha Coakley's office points to matters excluded from ballot initiatives, as detailed in our constitution's article 48, including:

No proposition inconsistent with any one of the following rights of the individual, as at present declared in the declaration of rights, shall be the subject of an initiative or referendum petition: The right to receive compensation for private property appropriated to public use; the right of access to and protection in courts of justice; the right of trial by jury; protection from unreasonable search, unreasonable bail and the law martial; freedom of the press; freedom of speech; freedom of elections; and the right of peaceable assembly.

It's the old freedom-of-elections bugbear.

The sticking point is that getting an ID requires at least $25 per person. That would be unconstitutional for those who cannot afford this.

The current law (Chapter 54 §76B) reads that a voter has to show ID if poll workers ask it. This can be a current, valid photo ID or "a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows the name and address of the voter..."

While most folk think that the lengthy, detailed law works fine, the petitioners for the initiative (11-21) figure otherwise. They write that having every voter show government-issued photo ID every time helps meet their goal of "desiring to preserve the integrity of the voting process,"

As it is, voters show up and orally ID themselves by address and name. If there's a question, they can present a photo ID, like a license or passport, or bring a recent utility bill or such.

As a long-term poll worker, I have not seen any problems. The initiative proposer, Mansfield Selectman Olivier Kozlowski goes for the apocryphal. He told the local Sun Chronicle newspaper that even though there's no evidence of even sparse voter fraud, "Every election you hear stories."

He also brought out the old better-safe-than-sorry routine so beloved of those who favor wiretaps, TSA body probes and such. Since you have to show ID for so many things, why not add voting?

Unfortunately, he falls into and is swallowed up by the huge trap of common sense. "It's only common sense" is what people say when they have nothing. That translates into, "I'm going to make wild assertions and don't want any questions or comments."

Well, Coakley had a comment. Good on her.t.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, voter ID, South Carolina, Coakley, ballot initiative

Humanizing Transgender Rights Bill

2011-09-06T10:11:00.001-04:00

The very human face of civil rights is at BMG now in the form of an open letter from parents of their transgender children. They address the real issues underlying the rights bills under consideration on Beacon Hill.

We find it disgraceful that anti-LGBT forces lie about this. With a vast number of basic human rights at stake, trying to divert the discussion into fantasized scare tactics centered on public toilets insults us all. It also puts us far behind over a dozen other states, including all but NH in New England in protecting this group of us.

Read and respond at BMG. Then catch Kara Suffredini and Gunner Scott at Left Ahead next week.

Flash and Follow-Through, Prez

2011-09-05T07:46:00.002-04:00

Over at the FT, Clive Crook nails the perfect poster on a tree for our President. I had my own thoughts about his Thursday jobs/economy speech, but this more than covers it.

It's a two-parter — go huge on the recovery program and then go directly to the voters to make it all happen.

He calls for Obama to propose:

Even deeper payroll-tax cuts
Lots of money for underwater mortgage principal reduction
Big subsidies for new jobs
State-level stimulus at least as big as the last time
Serious tax reform
Increased retirement age

The pathetic GOP Congress clearly doesn't care about Americans, just regaining power and returning to their disingenuous, failed policies. They won't support anything he says Thursday, even if fighting him permanently ruins our economy and democracy.

So, Crook figures almost certainly rightly that rallying the fearful and desperate public to his spend-and-reform program is the only workable strategy.

Enough said. It's time for action, Mr. President.

Tags: massmarrier, Obama, economy, speech, FT, Clive Crook

Your Data, Their Blunders

2011-09-04T13:14:00.001-04:00

It's anxiety-making easy to find stories of lost and stolen personal data and intellectual property.

OK, boys and girls, one of the latest high-tech clumsiness was a repeat of an Apple employee losing the proprietary prototype of the next generation iPhone, maybe in a bar. This happened to Apple before.

Then there was the BP employee on a business trip who lost a laptop holding a spreadsheet with personal data from 13,000 oil-spill claimants. A wrap-up article includes citations of NJ BC/BS stolen laptop with data from 300,000 customers, another was the GAP losing 800,000 job applicants' data, a hacker grabbing key SS and financial data from 226,000 customers of the Davidson Companies, and the Veterans Administration's stolen laptop with data from 26.5 million current and past U.S. military members.

We all know how government agencies, retailers, financial institutions and even utilities demand personal data to get services and goods.They assure us both that they won't sell our stuff — emails, phones, addresses, Social Security numbers, bank accounts ID and on and one — but we have to reveal all and (ta da) trust them.

It's increasingly plain that we should not trust them. They have neither the technology systems nor the training in place to keep our data safe. They first rely on nothing or password systems that millions of kids among others could hack. They allow absurd amounts of complete data sets out at a time on single hard drives. Far too many move thousands or millions of sets of actionable data onto laptop hard drives, which every bozo and bozoette in the company can leave with for whatever honorable or nefarious purpose, or lose on an airplane, in a cab or at a bar. And they do.

Nearly all of the many, many cases of data exposure are human errors, both of the employees who lose the computers and other objects, and the systems people and managers who set up the safeguards. Their heads should roll. The companies and agencies should pay heavy enough fines and open disgrace that they change their ways. Applying magical thinking to data security is totally inadequate.

Think this is like using the term accident to account for inattentive or reckless driving that brings maiming or death. Sure the cops, prosecutors and judges can identify (there but for fortune...), but that is wrong, often fatally wrong, thinking. Some missteps definitely deserve punishment and prevention.

The humanity defense is not a solid one here. Nor is it in most places used. Consider how to apply, "It's only human to..." Yeah, it's human to take your eyes off the road, to lose things in a restaurant or bar when you've been drinking, to walk off an airplane totally forgetting expensive and essential goods, and for that matter, to lie, cheat, steal, rape or any of a large number of crimes and offenses you think you might get away with when no one's paying close attention.

Actually many of our laws specifically call out human frailties. Because something valuable is not being guarded at a moment doesn't make it up for grabs, for example.

For the deterrent factor, clamping down criminally and civilly on the schmo who puts large numbers of us at risk for direct stealing or ID theft should start immediately. One strike and you're out. It should also cost the company a lot more than one-year subscriptions to credit-card watching services.

Yet because they're good at protecting themselves, if not you, the managers will be harder. The facts are that lazy or dull-witted IT types and corporate managers who make security policy are culpable. Allowing huge chunks of key data affecting thousands or millions of human beings to flow out of control is asinine.

I suspect that much of the laptop-based losses fall back on that old employees-are-lazy syndrome that affects so many so-so managers. The conceit starts with a belief that if only those shiftless employees would put in anywhere near the effort and production that the sainted managers did, the company would be at least twice as wealthy. Even when measurable productivity soars beyond other countries' and financial troubles can easily be traced to short-term management thinking, that's the pretense. It's delusional and destructive.

A common corollary is that employees will only do a decent amount of work if they always have to be on. Going to a distant customer or for a conference? Well then, be sure the carry a laptop with all possible applications and data you might conceivably need. Work in the airport. Work on the airplane. Work in the hotel. Work over dinner. Work. Work. Work.

The filthy secret is that what is human is overload. That leads to inefficiency of thought and output. That leads to fatigue and concomitant errors. That leads to oversights and mistakes as we try to pretend that there is no end to our multi-tasking abilities. Top being tired with a couple of drinks and, now did you leave that damned laptop in the booth?!

For managers:

Security policies don't work well enough and need to be more thoroughly thought out and tested.
No sensitive data should leave the building without a lot better reason than it just might come in handy while you're traveling.
Encryption, password and other software-based security has to be harder, even it's inconvenient for employees short term.
Any data breach has to be analyzed to death, from management and IT aspects as well as the obvious employee possession ones.
Databases that travel should be neutered, that is separated from Social Security number and the like so that a lost or stolen hard drive is useless to others; they can be merged when the employee returns, to reflect any changes.
Those responsible for putting customers at risk need punishment fitting their involved incompetence.

Sorry, kiddies, it's only human doesn't cut...whether you're drunk driving, drunk laptop toting, or half thinking security policies and procedures.

Cross-post note: This started out seeming like it belonged only at Harrumph, but there's enough politics here, and Labor Day worker thought to spread it.

Tags: massmarrier, loss, security, laptops, data

Anonymice and Malice

2011-09-01T09:38:00.000-04:00

In more proof that being rich or powerful doesn't mean you're always right or smart, see who's afraid of anonymous blog posts and comments, as well as handles for social-media accounts.

Today's John Gapper Financial Times column wraps it up clearly, with one major oversight. He cites Google Chair Eric Schmidt and former Facebook Marketing Director Randi Zuckerberg. The latter was strongest with simply, "I think anonymity on the internet has to go away."

It is indubitable that tolls, anonymice and fake-name commenters on blogs, social-media and MSM sites are obnoxious...and cowardly. As an online omnivore and a blogger who's had plenty of nasty comments, particularly on this marriage-equality blog, I understand. However, I moderate all my blogs and find deleting the haters' and spammers' comments a small price for encouraging dialog.

In the FT, Gapper notes that Google and Facebook have the right to set policies for their sites. In the case of Google+ this extends to the inanity of forbidding users with legal single-name identities. That's crazy beyond Schmidt's claim to beat back bullies, spammers and such. Users can decide whether they'll put up with anal retentive, irrational restrictions. Much as there is no mandate that you travel by air, it's just that if you do, you know you can get frisked and roughed up by TSA types or even worse. Your choice, pilgrim.

Gapper's grasp does not include the underlying motivations. Those raging at or terrified of web users without strong identities (easily verifiable and traceable ones) have serious ambiguity issues. They think differently from most people and a few of them are in a position to affect the options for and behaviors of millions of us.

Ambiguity scholar David Wilkerson has studied this extensively, published on it, and even has a keen breakout of four leadership styles related to it. These comprisej:

Mode One - Technical Leadership. These leaders usually deal with ambiguity by denial or creating their own certainty. They are also more dictatorial and are very risk averse by nature.
Mode Two - Cooperative Leadership. The aim of mode two leaders is to disambiguate uncertainty and to build teams around them to mitigate risk.
Mode Three - Collaborative Leadership. Mode three leaders have a tendency towards consensual methods of leadership. They prefer to work towards aligning team members values and getting agreement. Their approach to ambiguity is for the group to examine it.
Mode Four - Generative Leadership. These leaders use ambiguity to find opportunity. They tend to be inveterate learners and innovators.

You likely know people who fall clearly into such categorical descriptions, and may recognize yourself. Understanding these distinctions should blunt the drive by all but Mode One sorts to force their fear of ambiguity on others.

The many of us who are more flexible (see related rant on Harrumph) continue to roll with and analyze what we read online. Strong identity will not stop haters, scammers and spammers. They've been using easily faked email and other identity from the beginning of the WWW.

Instead, as Gapper calls for, we need to avoid expanding the policy choices of Mode One types to the whole net. Sure people can decide whether they'll go with new Google+ restrictions, but they have that choice. Likewise, they should be free to choose whether to read and judge a blog post or comment or other online opinion on its own. Some of us can handle it..

Tags: massmarrier, internet, anonymous, Gapper, strong identity, Google, Facebook, Financial Times

Greenway Going Great

2011-08-31T09:02:00.001-04:00

Hail to the many who have worked for the better part of two decades for a Neponset River Greenway! Within two years, the biggest missing piece will be complete. Citizens, engineering sorts and bureaucrats alike have 'er done.

I joined what looked like a little over a hundred in the Foley Senior Center on River St. in Mattapan last evening for another quenching trip to the well. You can grab the straight coverage and a link to the presentation at the Dorchester Reporter. You can also search at that site for excellent past coverage on this trail.

The short of it is that after many meetings and laborious compiling of complaints, suggestions and comments of Milton, Mattapan and Dorchester abutters (and numerous whiners, loudmouths and cheerleaders), the final plan looks like a winner. A large majority apparently love it. It moves from conceptual drawings to engineer docs that can aid in getting the federal money for the project as well as giving the nitpickers and Myers-Briggs S types something to hold and come to terms with happening. They are now figuring that completion of a link from Central Avenue into Mattapan Square for a ped/bike path will happen by the fall of 2013.

Click the pic for a closer view or go to the presentation for it and the earlier schemes. Key aspects are that it starts at the existing path at Central Avenue, runs between the trolley path and river, crossing from Milton to Mattapan on a new bridge by the Ryan Playground, then curves on the north of the river to a new ped/bike bridge over and around the trolley terminus and into Mattapan Square.

This came after five previous plans. After the public meetings and private comments, which the presentation recaps in concepts and numbers, the latest plan seemed to placate nearly everyone.

I came for the details, but left with a felt sense of the democratic skills involved, particularly the the DCR folk in managing a prickly, often nasty process. While he was quick and frequent to spread credit and praise, the diplomat in chief seems to be Jack Murray.

The DCR Deputy Commissioner for Park Operations is unfazed by the hostile, NIMBY and unfair-to-me types. Even at this largely jovial celebration, several dissatisfied folk spoke out and up, without rattling Murray. He's been though a couple years of rough democracy on this and kept his cool and his smile.

In fact, several of the pols who attended and chimed in their praises (Sen. Brian Joyce and Reps. Linda Dorcena Forry and Russell Holmes) called the process out for its amazing transparency, flexibility, and outreach. There was passing mention of the contention involved from the beginning, and nothing but kudos for a thoroughly open process — perhaps an inspiration for the larger government, ask I?

Murray was also charmingly coy about the MBTA. It refused to allow an at-grade crossing for the trail, leading to among other expensive problems, a ped/bike bridge at Mattpan station. Murray just smiled and said "We love our sister agencies."

So it's worth nothing the residual complaints that bring up what the DCR and the many others involved overcame. Last evening lacked the whiffs of racism and classism noted in articles about earlier public meetings. A few of those seemed to mirror the fears that kept Weston from allowing an extension of the Minuteman path. There was only one of those last night, and of course Murray handled that well.

Despite the round praise for the proposal, one resident still wanted her say, there and in some private meeting. It was a wonder to hear. She said the trolley runs behind her house and the bike path will. Her concern was that cyclists would jump the fence and do something nefarious on her property - to her possessions or daughter. Hearing that it doesn't happen, not in Boston or Lexington, and that bike paths add light and witnesses, making areas safer was not enough. She didn't seem to notice that she undercut her argument by saying she feared the same of the nearby trolley. The fact that this has never been a problem did not deter her. She wanted some kind of meeting with state officials and not a public one. Meh.

Toward the end of the question-and-comment period another resident tried the it's-only-a-start ploy. He's surely sadly mistaken if he supposes something with this much pubic input and accommodation awaits his brilliant revisions and a restart.

Otherwise, the niggles were indeed niggling. People were pleased at the result and particularly at having been listened to. They could see their suggestions, complaints and fine-tuning before them. The Neponset River Tail Phase II is rolling right along.

Duplication note: Being both bike-personal and political, this is a cross-post from Harrumph.

Tags: massmarrier, Mattapan, cycling, greenway, NIMBY, Milton, Neponset, DCR

Even the Globe Gets Warren

2011-08-31T07:53:00.001-04:00

Put snide aside. Brian McGrory was awake and sharp when almost-candidate for U.S. Senate Elizabeth Warren spoke with the Globe. His piece is as insightful as any I've seen. You should read it...all the way through...to know what to expect if she announces a run just after Labor Day.

In particular, he focuses on differences that would surely come with such a campaign, such as:

She far prefers to fight for what she believes in rather than compromise it all away.
When she is asked a question, any question, she looks the person in the eye and answers it.
"I came from an America that created opportunities for people like me, and I now see an America where the government works for people who already have money and power."

With those, you know that she'll be relentlessly candid rather than smarmily calculating. You know as I heard in a listening meeting that she deals with ideas first and with problem/solution pairs right after. She is eager to put forward her ideas instead of mealy mouthing. It's a level of courage we rarely see in candidates or elected officials.

All of that out there, what will she make of her residency silliness? I have been reading double-damned comments already. She has been here and at Harvard for 17 years; ergo, she's one of those dreadful Cambridge elitists. She has been here for only 17 years; so, she's not one of us and never will be. Chicken lips, I say. Let the long-time MA resident raised in OK put her powerful ideas out there for both serious and trivial criticism.

She can take it. She can dish it out. She'll kick up the level of debate several notches. It's going to be a bumpy night.

Tags: massmarrier, Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, McGrory, Congress, U.S. Senate

DSK Slithers to D.C.

2011-08-24T10:56:00.000-04:00

Oh, so litigious in that European way, newly released Dominique Strauss-Kahn is just beginning to ripple his flab. His lawyers in France are suing a journalist who has brought charges that he tried to rape her. Word is that he is filing a suit against the hotel maid whose complaint led to his rape charges here, and who has filed a civil suit against him in the case.

In Manhattan, DA Cyrus R. Vance Jr.'s office had the trial judge drop changes that he attempted rape and succeeded in other forcible sexual acts against a hotel maid. There is a 25-page filing explaining that. The gist is that his accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, had been caught in too many previous lies to be credible.

Whether she ends up with a monetary award from a jury later, Diallo is figuratively screwed as well. Numerous papers report that deportation is in the works. Her pleas to stay in the United States as a Guinean victim of gang rape she admits were false. There is the double whammy of her criminal case slipping into not-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt territory, as well as getting tossed from this country.

In the larger picture, her convoluted circumstances do not necessarily bode poorly for American women claiming rape or harassment.

A true downside is not at all surprising. She was not credible, but he was. She admitted lying to stay here. The DA's folk stretched that as seen in the dismissal filing with glib assertions that Strauss-Kahn's DNA on her pantyhose, including the crotch did not begin to prove he had actually groped her genitals. Moreover, they conclude that three-inch damage ("defects" as they put it) might have come "from normal wear and tear."

The dismissal request also includes such silliness as quibbling over two minutes of a timeline. Writing that the door key-card records and Strauss-Kahn's cellphone history make it impossible to pinpoint how long Diallo was in the suite. This of course assumes perfect accuracy on the hotel computer system and the cell company. Huh and so what?

Such piling on to Diallo is not quite a throwback to rape accusations requiring uninvolved corroborating witnesses, but it's close.

Instead, we see what many initial reports feared. The rich, powerful white guy (with a long history of accusations of sexual harassment and adultery) being believed while the poor black woman (with a short history of self-serving dishonesty) is not. It's a clear case of money talks, but as Strauss-Kahn's civil suits show, he's not through claiming that he is the wronged party here.

Back in France, common response to this may best come from an opinion piece in Le Monde. There, essayist Pascal Bruckner ridicules the prosecution as just more American lack of sophistication in his L'affaire DSK aura révélé une bien triste image de l'Amérique (The DSK affair shows a very sad picture of America).

He starts with a glib apocryphal tale of European tourists in America being hassled by cops for a toddler girl on the beach without a top. He writes that we hicks just don't understand the ways of men and women together.

Touristes français qui partez outre-atlantique, soyez prudents ; si jamais vous prenait l'envie de batifoler avec un ou une autochtone, munissez-vous d'une décharge officielle : que votre partenaire, mâle ou femelle, reconnaisse par écrit qu'il vous autorise à jouir de son corps. Nous avons beaucoup de choses à apprendre de nos amis américains mais certainement pas l'art d'aimer. (French tourists, be careful across the Atlantic if you decide to tumble [frolic] with a native and get a legal release in writing from your partner, male or female, that you had the right to enjoy that body. We can surely learn many things from our American friends, but certainly not the art of love.)

Similar comments from readers in British papers as well lean toward the unfairly accused and maligned Strauss-Kahn.

Even in the DA's filing, he takes note of the pending rape change in France. The dismissal request concludes that, "It appears unlikely, however, that prosecutors would be permitted to introduce in their case-in-chief any testimony by (accuser) regarding this alleged attack."

For the literal, the dismissal certainly adheres to efficacy and strict legal guidelines. The spirit of the law and of, as Bob Dylan wrote in The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, "the ladder of law has no top and no bottom" is not met.

Note that the maid Hattie Carroll was murdered by a rich, powerful white man in front of numerous witnesses, apparently because he just had the whim to throw his cane across the room at her. He got six months for the murder and to his death held that he should not have been convicted. There are far more dissimilarities to these tales than not, but the effects of the power differences remain.

In Manhattan, we see again how messy criminal cases often are. Yes it would be ideal for all witnesses to be utterly honest and impeachable. Likewise, wouldn't it be great if several people, including at least one police officer, were present and alert and accurate when the acts in question occurred.

Those circumstances are as rare as an accused criminal 'fessing up and doing a Edward G. Robinson, "You got me, copper." Those were in books and movies when the bad guy always died or went to prison.

Stauss-Kahn certainly seems sleazy. In this case, the circumstantial evidence, even without his past accusations, suggest at least enough evidence to go to trial. Yet Vance was not willing to risk it. It is likely that the accused lawyers could grind up an inconsistent accuser on the stand. Isn't that for a jury and/or judge to hear and decide?

We won't know and the speculation I've seen in the French press is that the prosecution in his pending attempted rape charges may do the same as Vance. If there's not enough current evidence, forget it.

Few of us can be unimpeachable or have flawless pasts. Yet a huge takeaway here seems to be for women pursuing sexual assault cases to 1) step up immediately and 2) be relentlessly consistent. Those are tough in such circumstances, but a world of reasonable doubt demands them.

Obama, Angry?

2011-08-20T10:15:00.002-04:00

Multiple mentions of physically dark folk not wanting to appear emotionally dark caught me this week. The perceived political wisdom that black or Latino men should not turn off voters is at once obvious and befuddling.

I recall Black Panthers and others who seriously expressed anger. Speeches included calls to kill whitey, plain folk as well as cops. There's some threatening anger.

Cross-post note: This started out as a personal blog, over at Harrumph. As happens, it morphed a bit and seems as apt here.

For two examples this week, consider:

Very savvy image consultant Dorie Clark was on WGBH's Callie Crossley show again. She noted in a segmentasking whether Barack Obama could win a second term that the POTUS was caught in the vise. Angry black men can freak constituents.
This morning's Financial Times had a similar treatment in their generally LITE Lunch with... series, this time with San Antonia Mayor Julián Castro. He spoke of the immigration backlash against Hispanics and its racist aspects. Yet, as Richard McGregor wrote, "He admits he is conscious not to sound angry. Obama has exercised a similar discipline. It seems to be a rule of American politics that an angry black or Hispanic man does not play well with the broader electorate."

Yet all but those in comas here are aware of angry white folk. Many in Congress, the Tea Party and winger spokesmen (screams-men?) and lobbying and interest groups are mad as hell about this, that and the other. They yell, they defame, they lie at high volume and with repetition, and some even threaten violence.

It all makes me wonder that if the timorous and accommodating POTUS displayed real anger that really would be so bad. As a nation, we certainly have expected our top leaders to express outrage and anger befitting the situation. Is it really true that our first black President has a separate set of behaviors?

The recent, prolonged GOP debt, spending and tax disgrace just had to make him furious. Even many voters in that party expressed and continue to express fury at the continued insistence on transferring wealth to the super-rich from the middle and lower classes. Yet, the POTUS spoke of disappointment.

Disappointment?! That's when the ice-cream shop is out of the flavor you drove 10 miles to taste.

Rage should come when confronting ideologues who would steal from tens of millions of oldsters to increase benefits for multi-millionaires and billionaires. If that doesn't make even the most mild-mannered black man angry, something's wrong here.

To turn this from political to personal, this has reminded me of way back in my single days. I was keeping company with a fairly volatile woman, who would blow up and yell sometimes, including at me.

A mutual friend, a psychologist, noted how even tempered I was and how I grew up in a home where people didn't act out. He asked how I reacted when she was like that. I said I let her run through the course. He asked then what I thought would happen if I yelled back. I said I hadn't thought about it and he went on to ask (with a smile) whether I figured that would destroy the relationship. I replied that I thought it would.

He had known her for a long time and said it would not. He advised yelling back. She did. I did. Not only did nothing bad happened, she was much less likely to flip out around me. Things got better. She acted more like I and I didn't have to yell back again.a

That's not to say that if Obama displays justifiable anger some people won't diss him. Hell, they already do. Plus, he has the big bunch of progressives who are on him for not being strong enough to demand fair negotiation from the wingers.

Conciliation doesn't seem to be the best approach here and now. It's time for our President to yell back.

Tags: massmarrier, anger, Obama, Dorie Clark, Congress, voters