IF YOU HAVE TO ASK HOW MUCH OLYMPICS COST, YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT: The Boston Globe reports that
organizers of Boston’s 2024 Olympics bid “are wooing wealthy business
executives to join an elite group of private financial donors known as the
‘Founders 100’ ” and that getting into the group will cost an individual at
least $50,000 and a company at least $100,000, (“Olympics group calls on
wealthy executives,” 1-23-15). Some
experts on philanthropy in the Hub subsequently opined that fundraising for a
putative Olympics would not have an adverse impact on giving to other, more
established worthy causes. Apparently, these prospective donors are so well off
that they have multiple checks of the $50,000 variety to toss around. Not one
of them ever says to the president of small non-profit who comes knocking on
his door, “Sorry, I’m all tapped out for this year.” Sure.
EXAGGERATE IF YOU WANT TO RESONATE: Who knew you can’t believe someone who sends
you an email looking for a donation? A
recent Harvard faculty working paper (whatever that is) found that fundraising
appeals from political candidates were more effective when they told recipients
they were behind in the polls. A news
release on the working paper provided this example of a “message that
resonated” with prospective donors: “BREAKING: A new SurveyUSA Poll has
Democrats LOSING to Rick Scott in Florida, 41-42!!! Now is the moment to DETHRONE the king of
voter suppression and his allies in key battlegrounds.” The authors of the working paper said,
“Emails emphasizing that the preferred candidate was barely losing raised 60
percent more money than emails emphasizing that he was barely winning.”
NO ONE WILL EVER LOVE YOU, AMERICA, LIKE RUDY: Do you recall
how, in 2002, when Mitt Romney was running for governor, his handlers brought
in former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to put a shine on the campaign, and how
Giuliani had just the right touch with the man (and the woman) on the street, semi-
famously responding to a North Ender who offered to buy him and Mitt a cannoli
by wrapping his arm around the guy and saying, “No, let me buy you a cannoli,” while Mitt stood
awkwardly by, seemingly anxious about messing up the campaign schedule? Now “America’s Mayor” has become the pol with
the opposite of touch: he infamously told a dinner gathering in Wisconsin last
week, “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do
not believe that the president loves America.
He doesn’t love you. And he
doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up
the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”
No doubt those words sent a jolt of excitement through every Democratic operative
in the land. Obama will be sending Rudy
a love letter every week if he keeps talking like that.
NEVER MIND THE AQUIFER, WHAT ABOUT HIS LUNGS? Speaking of the Globe, did you happen to see
the story last month about the folks on Cape Cod who are up in arms about NStar
using herbicides to kill vegetation below its power lines, (“Cape residents
protest NStar’s use of herbicides,” 1-20-15)? The director of Protect Our Cape Cod Aquifer
was quoted as saying, “NStar’s cocktail of herbicides, with their unknown
long-term side effects, has no place on Cape Cod with its fragile
environment.” The story was accompanied
by a photo of a worker spraying herbicides from a big device strapped to his
back. He wasn’t wearing a mask or any protective
clothing that I could see. I surmised
that (a) the worker was a person of at least normal intelligence, and (b) the
“cocktail” he was lugging around can’t be all that toxic if he’s willing to
breathe in its particles all the live-long day.
OUR VALUES NOT STRENGTHENED BY ANONYMITY: Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Associate
Justice Robert Cordy was right: Being a citizen means there are times when you
have to stand up and be counted.
Formerly Governor William Weld’s general counsel, Cordy authored the opinion
for the majority in a case decided in favor of the Boston Globe, which had sued
to obtain the names of jurors in a murder trial. Access to information about jurors, he wrote,
“promotes confidence in the judicial system by, among other things, providing
an independent nongovernmental verification of the impartiality of the jury
process, and educating the public as to their duties and obligations should
they be called for jury service.” Chief
Justice Ralph Gants dissented. “We have
had few instances in this Commonwealth where jurors have been threatened or
harassed after their verdict, but many jurors fear the possibility, especially
where they reside in or near the communities of the litigants or the litigants’
families,” wrote Gants. “I also fear
that the creation of a juror list to be included in the case file may, over
time, diminish the fairness and impartiality of jurors.” We ask young men and women to risk their
lives in the defense of our nation and its values. Is our state asking too much if it publishes
our names should we be called to serve in relation to the Sixth Amendment to
the Constitution?
FIVE YEARS LATER, A SLAP STILL STINGS: In a guest column in
CommonWealth magazine, former Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation Jim
Aloisi pulled the curtain back on a sharp disagreement he had with the Senate
chairman of the legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation in 2009,
(“Aloisi’s fixes for the T: Get rid of MassDOT board, 2-11-15”). “The MassDOT board is a vestige of a
political battle, not of thoughtful public policy,” Aloisi wrote. “The 2009 Transportation Reform bill that I
filed with the legislature did not include a MassDOT board – that was an
invention of the Senate, and its former transportation chair, Steven Baddour of
Methuen. He and I were feuding about my
opposition to his ‘reform before revenue’ approach to the bill, an approach
that I feared (rightly) would lead to reform without much meaningful net new
revenue. Creating the board was meant as
a slap to me; its entire rationale for being was a way to reduce my power as
secretary. Even after I received
assurances from both the then House and Senate chairs that the secretary would
be on the board as an ex-officio member, that did not happen. The change in the law placing the secretary
on the board took place several years later, after it became clear that the
construct enacted into law in 2009 freezing out the secretary was untenable.” The art of governing is only made better when
a public servant, or a former public servant, tells us candidly what happened when an important piece of
legislation was created -- or rather, his version of what happened. I hope Steve Baddour will now avail himself
of the CommonWealth franchise to share his version -- or to slap back, as the
case may be. 
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