Massachusetts Politics Blog

The Environment Should Be a Factor in Siting a Casino in Eastern Mass.

2012-02-23T09:14:00.006-08:00

It's still early in the race to license three casinos in Massachusetts, but Suffolk Downs in East Boston seems to have the momentum needed to gain the one big prize available in the eastern part of the state. It holds the favored position despite the glaring downsides to a casino in that spot.

Let us count some of the ways that the old racetrack on the Boston-Revere line doesn't fit the bill for a large, resort-style casino:

One, it's out of the way and hard to get to. From downtown Boston, you have to drive there on Route C-1 or take the MBTA's Blue Line. Thanks to the role C-1 plays in servicing Logan Airport, traffic is already backed up in that area for hours on many days. It can only get worse when thousands of gamblers enter the mix, every day and night.

Two, it has no synergy with the convention center, the hotels, the restaurants, the clubs and the other attractions of downtown Boston. People will not go to Suffolk Downs as part of some other activity or reason to be in Boston, such as attending a convention, visiting the city's historical sites, or going out on the town for the night.

Three, a casino at Suffolk will add to existing congestion in three communities that are densely settled and already very busy: East Boston, Revere and Winthrop. It will thus make life harder for the hard-working folks of generally average (or lower) means who have lived there, worked there, and built those communities for generations.

Four, if horse racing is going to die a natural death in eastern Massachusetts without a rescue from the casino industry, as appears inevitable, talk of a casino at Suffolk forestalls a larger, more important discussion about the best way to reuse the racetrack. It could be argued, for example, that creating more housing in Boston is a higher priority than licensing a casino, and that a transit-oriented housing development is a better way to go, long-term, because the site adjoins the Blue Line, and because the line's Suffolk Downs station could easily accommodate the folks residing in a new "commuter village" there.

To this list we can legitimately add environmental concerns.

In an opinion piece published yesterday (2/22/12) in the Boston Globe, ("The state of green. Patrick has a good track on environment, but there is still a lot of work to be done"), former state senator George Bachrach, now president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts, nailed this point when he said:

"Casinos are now on center stage. We need economic development and jobs. The question is where? Foxwoods was built in the middle of nowhere, in the Connecticut countryside. Forty thousand cars a day make the pilgrimage, adding to our pollution. When Massachusetts builds casinos, they must be accessible to an existing infrastructure without putting endless cars on parade, poisoning the air we breathe and despoiling the open spaces we value."

Where in eastern Massachusetts is the most accessible existing infrastructure for a casino? Only in downtown Boston -- and especially near South Station and the convention center. You could get to a casino there by plane, train, bus, car and boat, and you could easily walk to that casino from several excellent, large hotels already operating in that area.

But no one's talking about a downtown casino. All we hear about is Suffolk Downs.

It's still early in the race, though.

Read the entire Bachrach piece at: http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2012/02/22/patrick-environmental-legacy-risk/xkpbZYZ1K2obb406OfqwDK/story.html

Some Random Thoughts on a Warm Friday Before Presidents Day

2012-02-17T13:51:00.000-08:00

There must be something a little crazy about a 50-degree day in February, something that brings out the Andy Rooney in me, that makes me think the blogosphere is in need of my random observations and pronouncements:

Back in January, Denise Andrews, a freshman state rep from the town of Orange, went to the podium during a formal House session expressly to complain that so many of her colleagues were chatting among themselves during the debate on an education collaborative reform bill that no one could hear what was being said. "We wonder in today's society why in the classroom teachers are not listened to," Andrews lamented. "Yet, we sit here on Beacon Hill and do not listen to each other." Her point was driven home later when State House News Service reporter Colleen Quinn asked several legislators what they thought of Andrews's complaint. Each replied that he had been unable to hear her because there was so much noise in the House at the time, so they could not comment on what she said.

Young Joe Kennedy the Third heard enough during his recent listening tour of the Fourth Massachusetts Congressional District to persuade him he had to run for Barney Frank's seat. I've never kept score on these listening tours, but I can't recall anyone completing one and announcing he could find no good reason to run and was swearing off the idea of ever seeking elective office. I should go on a listening tour simply to capture the distinction of being the first "tourist" to declare, "I ain't running. The people don't want me." (Trust me, they would not.)

Nurses are pushing once again for a mandatory staffing bill, meaning the ratio of nurses to patients in hospitals would be set by law. In previous sessions, bills like this have been enacted in the House, only to die in the Senate. When opposing these bills, hospital administrators always say they need flexibility when making staffing decisions, which may be true. (It's also better than saying their institutions cannot afford to pay for the ideal number of nurses on a patient floor and, besides, the public is not willing to pay for the highest and best levels of nursing care.) As the son of a registered nurse, (one of the best ever, she was), I can't help but believe that, if most front-line nurses in Massachusetts are convinced that mandatory staff ratios are needed to ensure good, safe, thorough care, this bill should pass.

I was glad to hear that Boston Mayor Tom Menino has dropped the idea of building a new city hall in South Boston. (He told WBZ radio in January, "I have no plans at this time to move city hall down to the waterfront.") It's not that I want to preserve the unique but stubbornly inhumane edifice in Government Center. I just think it's neat that the State House, the old State House, City Hall, and the old City Hall are all within a short walk of one another in downtown Boston. Convenient, yes, but more important is the statement it makes that the business of Boston is fundamentally governmental. We see a concentration of action there that explains the pulse of our capital city, a small metropolis powered by a big political heart. Yank city hall from the center of Boston and you damage the body politic in unexpected ways.

With a smile, I noted that a voter interviewed in New Hampshire by the New York Times before the presidential primary said he was going to vote for Romney because Mitt and his sons had once rescued a family whose boat was sinking on Lake Winnipesaukee, several hundred feet from the Romney's lake-front home. "It tells me he (Romney) would get done what needs to be done at any moment," said Harry Spain, age 85, of Belmont, N.H. I laughed not because Spain was unfairly crediting Romney -- the rescue story is true, and it reflects well on Mitt and those perfect boys of his -- but rather because it reminded me that the rescue had taken place late on a Sunday afternoon at a time when Romney was serving as governor of Massachusetts, and that many people at the State House subsequently marveled at Romney's ability to perform such deeds after a weekend of summer fun and relaxation. As one wag on The Hill put it at the time, "You gotta give it to Mitt. Most people in this building would have been in no shape to rescue anybody after a weekend of partying at the lake. That's when it pays to be a Mormon."

It's been known for a very long time that it's better for elderly folks to stay in their homes, and receive care in their homes if they need it, than to go into nursing homes, where the care can get expensive and impersonal. That's why freshman Quincy rep Tackey Chan, who was the star of the staff of former State Senator Michael Morrissey before running for office himself, deserves high praise for a bill he's filed, An Act to Provide an Income Tax Exemption for Families Caring for Their Elderly Relatives at Home, which is now before the Joint Committee on Children and Families. Anybody caring full time for an elderly relative deserves a tax cut. They're saving the health care system a bundle.

Sure every city and town official in Massachusetts is happy now to be saving shovelfuls of money on snow removal during this eerily warm and snowless and rainless winter. But these are some of the same folks who'll be telling us in August we have to support tax overrides to pay for drilling new municipal wells because aquifers were not replenished by the usual winter precipitation.

Sorry. I feel better now.

Newly Released JFK Recordings Bring to Mind the Involvement of Torby Macdonald

2012-02-07T13:22:00.000-08:00

The recent release of audio recordings made in the Kennedy White House jogged my memory about a story I heard one night many years ago in Malden about Torbert H. Macdonald, Harvard football star, World War II naval hero, lawyer, spouse of a Hollywood starlet, Congressman, and lifelong friend of JFK. It was a tale hinting strongly of intrigue and uncertainty at one of the early, critical junctures of the war in Vietnam.

On January 24, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston declassified and released to the public the final 45 hours of White House recordings that the president secretly made of meetings in the Oval Office. The batch included a conversation the president had on September 10, 1963, with Army General Victor Krulak and Joseph Mendenhall, an advisor to the State Department, regarding a fact-finding visit they had made to Vietnam at the behest of the president.

Kennedy was perplexed that two intelligent men had come back with such different impressions of one country. The war against the Viet Cong, the general said, "will be won (by the United States) if the current U.S. military and sociological programs are pursued." But the man from the State Department wasn't buying it. "The people I talked to in the (South Vietnam) government," Mendenhall said, "when I asked them about the war against the VC (Viet Cong), they said that is secondary now -- (that) our first concern is, in effect, in a war with the (allied) regime here in Saigon. There are increasing reports in Saigon and Hue, as well, that students are talking of moving over to the Viet Cong side."

After a pause, the president asked, "You both went to the same country?" There was nervous laughter, then Kennedy said, "I mean, how is (it) that you get such different -- This is not a new thing. This is what we've been dealing with for three weeks. On the one hand, you get the military saying the war is going better and, on the other hand, you get the political (opinion), with its 'deterioration is affecting the military'...What is the reason for the difference? I'd like to have an explanation what the reason is for the difference."

In the fall of 1963, there was growing disenchantment in the Kennedy administration with the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, and with the influence exerted by Diem's brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, and Nhu's imperious wife, "Madame Nhu," on the affairs of their war-enfeebled nation. Our ambassador to Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, was pressuring Diem behind the scenes to banish his brother and sister-in-law from the government. And according to secret State Department cables that were made public years later, President Kennedy's doubts about Diem's reliability as an ally in the war against the communists were so great that he was ready to explore the establishment of an alternative government in South Vietnam.

On November 1, 1963, six weeks after Kennedy's Oval Office colloquy with Krulak and Mendenhall, and three weeks before Kennedy would be killed in Dallas, there was a coup in South Vietnam. Both Diems were killed. Madame Nhu was sent into exile. To this day, the supposition persists that the Kennedy administration supported the overthrow of the Diem regime, actively or tacitly.

In the late-1970s, I was a reporter at the Malden (MA) Evening News, covering city government. My attendance at all meetings of the City Council and its various committees was required. At that time, Joseph Croken was the Malden City Clerk, meaning he took care of all of the Council's paperwork, helped run the Council meetings, and maintained all Council records. Previously, Croken had been the top aide to Torby Macdonald during Macdonald's 22 years in the U.S. Congress as the representative from the Seventh Massachusetts District (1954-76). Macdonald served until his death in the spring of 1976 at the age of 58.

One night, close to 10 o'clock, after a particularly long and drawn-out City Council meeting, Croken told me that Macdonald had traveled to Vietnam just before the coup against the Diems. I cannot remember the date, or even the year, when I heard this from him, and I have only a vague memory of the story having been prompted by some matter concerning local Vietnam veterans that was a topic of discussion at that night's Council meeting.

I had followed Croken to his office across from the Council chamber to photocopy a document in his possession, and as I was copying, we somehow we got talking about the war. "You know, Torby went to Vietnam not long before the president died," Croken said. "I was never sure why he went. He said very little to me about the trip. I always thought maybe he'd been sent there by the president on sort of a personal diplomatic mission."

"Wouldn't that have been around the time the Diems were killed in that coup?" I asked.

"That's right," Croken said.

"Do you think he (Torby) could have been checking things out in Saigon for the president, maybe to verify information Kennedy had been given, or was carrying a personal message from the president to someone in the government?"

"It's possible, I guess," Croken said. "Torby, like I said, never talked much about the trip. And before we knew it, the president was dead, Torby was devastated with grief, and the war went on. The thing (the trip) just faded."

If there was a secret at the heart of Macdonald's 1963 trip to Vietnam, it most likely died with him. He was a true friend and confidant of Kennedy's from their freshman year at Harvard, when Kennedy's father, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, insisted that his son room with an athlete because he didn't want his son to become an Ivy League twit, and Kennedy was placed with Macdonald, a handsome and gifted athlete who had grown up in Malden, the son of a renowned high school football coach. They remained close throughout Kennedy's life. Macdonald was an usher, for example, in Kennedy's wedding to Jacqueline Bouvier, and Macdonald would frequently visit with Kennedy at the end of his White House work days. Macdonald, however, was scrupulous about not trading on the fact he was close to the Kennedys.

It is not unreasonable, therefore, to speculate that the president sent Macdonald, who had significant military experience, to Vietnam in order to benefit from his first-hand impressions, and perhaps to help him find his way to the truth through the contradictory reports he was receiving from the State Department and the Pentagon. Any conjecture beyond that gets pretty wild.

Deval Is Always Ready to Road-TestThemes for His Friend Barack

2012-02-03T12:48:00.000-08:00

You have to say this about our governor: he's a good man to have in your corner, loyal as hell. Just ask Barack Obama, for whom Deval Patrick travels the country as a surrogate in the president's re-election campaign.

Patrick raised almost $600,000 in 2011 for his "Together" political action committee (PAC), the vehicle he uses to pay for the political missions he goes on for his friend the president. On any given weekend, you may find our governor in California or the Carolinas as the keynote speaker at big campaign fundraising dinners for state Democratic organizations.

Patrick is a polished, warm and inspiring speaker, as the Republicans learned to their chagrin in 2010, so he's good at packing the house wherever he goes. He's a definite commodity for his party.

In a State House News Service report this week on "Together," the PAC's executive director, Alex Goldstein, was quoted as saying he is "extremely appreciative of the generous support we continue to receive. These resources will be critical in the days ahead as the governor continues to engage in the national debate about the future of our country, and the importance of governing with the values of generational responsibility and the politics of conviction as our compass."

Together. Generational responsibility. Politics of conviction as our compass. These are among the key words for Deval Patrick this year, and for Barack Obama as well. View them as foundation stones in the platform of a party preparing for battle with a Mitt Romney whose career was built on the economic principle of "creative destruction."

When you hear Deval Patrick speaking in these terms, as he artfully did in his annual State of the State address on January 23, he is simultaneously beating the drum for two administrations with deep Chicago roots, his own and Obama's. The notes Patrick plays now will be picked up later by Obama and amplified. When the economy is barely out of neutral, where else the can the Democrats take this campaign but "We're all in this together, we're doing our best, and why would you ever think those Republicans will do more for you than we will"? For the Obama political team, that approach has the added attraction of having worked quite well for Patrick in his rough-and-tumble reelection fight with Charlie Baker and Tim Cahill.

Now Patrick didn't write his State of the State address just to warm up the nation's living room for Obama, but it's hard to read excerpts from that speech like the following and not see how well they shore up the particular, difficult position the president now finds himself in:

"This is my sixth speech of this kind. In that time, the world has experienced dramatic change and even turmoil. A global economic collapse. Slow job growth. Crumbling infrastructure. Growing inequality. A public craving change. Periods of challenge and uncertainty are not new -- not in Massachusetts and not in history. What defines us is not the challenge, but how we meet it. We remember with gratitude the generations before ours who rose to the challenges of their time and left for us a better Commonwealth. Thanks to them, many of us in this room tonight sit where our parents and grandparents could hardly imagine."

"Now we face our test. It is a test for our time and for the future. And while others elsewhere in positions like yours and mine succumb to division and stalemate, we here pulled together and, for the good of the Commonwealth, made hard choices."

"We have risen to past challenges -- and we will rise to these -- if we stay true to our values and work together. When we stay true to our values, we make decisions for the good of our future, choices that transcend momentary political convenience. I still believe that our Commonwealth is a community and that we have a stake in each other."

"When we work together, when we put aside sound-bite politics and insider games, we can overcome any challenge. I have no doubt about it."

"The challenge facing people in doubt about the future of their American Dream and their place in the workforce is ours, too. The challenge facing small businesses and working families struggling with the cost of health care is ours, too. The challenge facing those who fear for their safety and those seeking a way back, successfully, into mainstream life is ours, too. We can meet those challenges if we work together. After all, we are here today because someone did the same for us."

You do not have to accept Mitt Romney's formulation (as I do not) that he is on a quest to "save the soul of America" to appreciate the grand scale of the coming Obama-Romney showdown, which will pit the urban ethos of a dense, immigrant, Democratic stronghold like that of Chicago against the pioneering, fend-for-ourselves, western homesteading ethos like that of Salt Lake City.

Who do you think is more likely to win: Chicago or Salt Lake City?

Is "Too Big to Fail" Finding an Echo in Massachusetts Health Care Debate?

2012-01-31T14:09:00.000-08:00

In his January 23rd State of the State address, Governor Deval Patrick pushed the legislature hard to act soon on a comprehensive health care cost control bill he introduced almost a year ago, House Bill 1849, An Act Improving the Quality of Health Care and Controlling Costs by Reforming Health Systems and Payments.

"Before you take up next year's budget, pass health care cost containment legislation," Patrick exhorted members of the legislature, who had assembled in the House chamber to hear the address.

Budget deliberations customarily begin in April, so Patrick was trying to set a March 31 deadline for enactment of H.B. 1849. It was not the first such attempt. Last October, he challenged the legislature to take up the bill in January.

Within two days of the State of the State address, it became clear that, one, the legislature would not be voting on health care cost control before it starts working on the Fiscal Year 2012-13 budget; and, two, legislative leaders are wary of changing the health care system because so much of the Massachusetts economy rides on health care.

The State House News Service reported that Dick Moore, Senate chairman of the Health Care Financing Committee, said, "We need to be very thoughtful about moving the health care system away from the current method of paying for volume of care toward paying for value of care. We need to get this right, or it could harm one of our most successful sectors of the state's economy. I'm confident that we'll have a good plan in the coming weeks, but it will differ significantly from the bill filed last year by the governor."

Moore's counterpart, House Health Care Financing Chairman Steve Walsh, later promised, "We will be doing something this session."

There's a rule requiring the legislature to adjourn by July 31 in years when legislative elections are held. This being one of those years, Walsh was committing only to a vote in the House on health care cost control in six months' time.

While acknowledging that "an awful lot of money can be squeezed out" of the health care system, Walsh said cost-cutting "can't be done overnight" without "harming patients, hurting employment, and hurting the industry, so we have to take an approach that is very sound and very smart. We can't turn that ocean liner immediately." (Was he thinking about the Costa Concordia when it made an ill-fated course adjustment off Italy not too long ago?)

Following the governor's address, House Speaker Robert DeLeo emphasized to the media that hospitals and other health care providers "are one of the major employers of people here in the Commonwealth, so we have to be extremely careful to try to make sure we get it right. It is my hope that we get it done this year."

We often hear how costly health care is, and how much it consumes of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP): 20% and still rising. (Fifty years ago, it barely consumed 5% of GDP.) But we don't hear as often how crucial health care is to the Massachusetts economy and how many Massachusetts jobs are in health care, so it might be good to point out now that 49,000 of our fellow citizens work in health care and that the collective health care payroll in this state tops $4.5 billion per year.

Forty-nine thousand jobs represent 15% of all employment in Massachusetts: one out of six people work in health care. Here's another figure to consider: the Massachusetts health care sector generates cumulative economic activity of between $60 billion and $70 billion annually.

When the Great Recession hit three-and-a-half years ago, we heard about some banks and financial institutions being so large that Uncle Sam couldn't allow them to succumb to bankruptcy. They were "too big to fail"! A variant of that theme now haunts the members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Senate. We could have a health care system "too big to shrink"?

An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Pre-Paid Rides for Party-Time Pols

2012-01-27T11:06:00.000-08:00

There's no reason to believe that politicians drink more or get into more trouble because of drinking than people in other lines of work. But when politicians-under-the-influence find themselves sideways with the law, they suffer more than the typical boozehound because of all the publicity. Witness the town administrator from a rural community in north-central Massachusetts community who recently had to admit to "sufficient facts" in a drunken driving case.

This man, age 33, was arrested one night in August of 2011 by Westboro police, who found him passed out on the hood of his car. He had miraculously pulled to a stop in the parking lot of a gas station on Route 9. One of the Boston TV stations heard about the story after the fact and had a camera crew on hand when the contrite offender, who has somehow managed to hold onto his town administrator's job, appeared in court to accept his punishment: one year of probation, alcohol education, fees totaling $1,380, and a restriction on nighttime driving.

In the course of the plea and sentencing, some rather embarassing details came out. For example, it was reported that the wayward town taskmaster had allegedly spent the hours prior to his arrest at a strip club in Worcester. (Way to complete the public official's perfect trifecta of danger, guy! Alcohol. Cars. Loose women.) Photos of the perpetrator, both before and after his snooze on the hood, were also released. There was no mistaking what had caused those stains on his untucked shirt and drooping drawers.

"I'm having a bad night," he supposedly told the police after failing his second field sobriety test, which would be like Gomez Addams saying his family was a little different.

In court, he told the judge, "I sincerely regret the events of the evening that led to my arrest. This lapse of judgment is very out of character for me. I have learned a lot from this incident." No doubt he has.

Will anyone else who holds a prominent position of public trust at the state or local levels learn anything from it? The obvious lesson: don't be your own chauffeur when you decide to go sight-seeing at your favorite strip club and drink like a former POW on his first toot.

When you think about it, the major political parties in this country could do the world a favor simply by setting up a transportation voucher system for office holders to utilize when they were incapable of driving safely due to alcohol consumption -- sort of Triple A for Party-Time Pols. The way it would work, a politician could dial up the service 24/7, get a ride all the way home, no matter how far it was, and pay the program back later.

For Mr. Town Administrator X, the cab fare from Worcester to his home in Danvers would have been a lot less than $1,380, and not one bit as regrettable as those photos that screamed, "Yes, I got really, really stupid."

Transgender Rights Advocates Did Admirable Job of Exploiting the Inevitable

2012-01-20T13:18:00.000-08:00

I don't know if the many advocates for the new transgender rights law in Massachusetts consciously follow the political maxim, "Exploit the inevitable," but that is what they have done.

On Nov. 16, 2011, both houses of the legislature voted to enact House Bill 3810, An Act Relative to Gender Identity, and the governor signed it into law a week later before heading off to Atlanta to celebrate Thanksgiving with relatives. Yesterday, the governor, legislative leaders, transgender advocates and supporters held a ceremonial bill signing event for HB 3810 in the Senate Reading Room in order to properly celebrate this historic law, which had been before the legislature in one form or another for six long years.

"I signed this bill as a matter of conscience," Gov. Patrick said yesterday. "No individual should face discrimination because of who they are."

Speaking on the floor of the House the night the bill was first voted on, Rep. Carl Sciortino, D-Somerville, a primary sponsor of the measure, said, "...this bill is going to make an immediate difference in the lives of the state's transgender residents, who desperately need anti-discrimination protections in housing and employment. I have been so moved by the courage of constituents who've shared their stories with lawmakers and shown the critical need for these civil rights protections."

The day the bill was enacted, the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition issued a press release stating it was "proud to announce" that it would become law.

The bill adds the words "gender identity" to the state's non-discrimination laws for the purpose of preventing discrimination against transgender residents seeking housing, employment, credit or post-secondary education. It also expands the state's hate crimes statutes to include violence perpetrated against transgendered men and women.

An Act Relative to Gender Identity is indeed a good and necessary addition to the laws of the Commonwealth. Through hours of deeply moving testimony from transgendered men and women who had lost jobs, been kicked out of apartments, or attacked physically simply because they are different, and through a sustained, all-out lobbying push from a coalition of civil rights and progressive groups, the case was made that Massachusetts had to do something now to protect this distinct minority group. (The transgender population of this state is said to number about 33,000.)

Nevertheless, An Act Relative to Gender Identity is significantly different from earlier versions of the bill that transgender rights advocates unsuccessfully championed. For example, the bills that didn't make it would have extended new protections to persons based on both their gender identity and their "gender expression." They also would have included public accommodations among the categories where transgendered persons could avail themselves of specific legal rights and protections. The legislature rejected both because it felt that, one, the term gender expression was too wide and ambiguous, and, two, traditional standards of privacy and gender separation should prevail in public bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, etc. Many opponents of the bill argued that someone who had not completed the physical transformation to the opposite gender, a man who was just "feeling like" a woman, for instance, could theoretically abuse the law by claiming the right to enter a women's locker room.

Two legislative sessions ago (2006-08), the first transgender rights bill was introduced containing the gender expression and public accommodations provisions. It ran into a lot of opposition and never got out of the Judiciary Committee.

Next session (2009-10), another transgender rights bill with these same provisions was filed. It, too, died in Judiciary.

Hoping the third time would be the charm, advocates again filed a bill with these provisions for the current (2011-12) session.

Obviously, though, they found that gender expression and public accommodations remained unmovable obstacles to passage. And, rather than suffer a third consecutive defeat, they decided to embrace a modified bill crafted under the prudent leadership of the House and Senate chairs of Judiciary, Chelsea's Eugene O'Flaherty and Brookline's Cynthia Creem, respectively. The modest, middle-of-the-road, O'Flaherty-Creem approach thus became the inevitability exploited by the transgender rights coalition when it trumpeted the bill in November (and again this week) as a victory, while softly conceding it is not what they had struggled long and hard to achieve.

And no one admitted that, if they had wanted to, they could have had this bill on the books three or four years ago.

Gunner Scott, executive director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Caucus, had the final quotation in the press release issued by governor's office on Nov. 23, the day Patrick signed the bill, and it was a good one. Said Scott, "This law will make a significant difference in the lives of transgender youth and adults across the state who need jobs, a safe place to live and a quality education." Around that same time, one of the most passionate and articulate members of the transgender rights coalition, Atty. Jennifer Levi, was describing An Act Relative to Gender Identity as a "first step," and promising to push for a new and improved version of the bill in the next (2013-14) session. "We support this bill," said Levi, director of Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD). "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."

We'll have to wait a while to see if the legislature, after six years of wrangling with one transgender bill, has the appetite to take on An Act Relative to Gender Identity, Part Two.

In Coming Class Warfare, Romney Hopes His Vest Is Bullet-Proof

2012-01-16T10:51:00.000-08:00

Even if he had the charisma of Ronald Reagan and the personality of George W. Bush, Mitt Romney would still have trouble relating to average working men and women. Almost all super-successful Republicans do. And wealthy Republicans who grew up in exclusive suburban enclaves, attended Ivy League colleges, and achieved fabulous success in business at an early age, as Romney did, have an especially hard time relating.

So if you're trying to figure out how Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, is doing in the next few months, watch closely how he handles the issue of increasing disparities of wealth among Americans and how he defends himself against the inevitable "you're a filthy rich man" attacks from the Democrats.

To date, the former Massachusetts governor seems to be settling into the classic Republican position that Republicans don't have a wealth problem, Democrats have any envy problem.

As Romney put it during his victory speech in New Hampshire, President Obama is a "leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy."

But not to worry, folks, there will be no class warfare from this owner of an estate on Lake Winnipesaukee. On the contrary, Romney wants to "lead us down a different path, where we are lifted up by our desire to succeed, not dragged down by a resentment of success."

This could work. Americans are an optimistic lot. They still rightly believe this is the land of opportunity, and they still rightly distrust government as the fixer of all problems. But it won't be easy for Romney to glide over the battlefields in the intensifying "war" among economic classes, as prosecuted by Democrats and Republicans alike.

(Class warfare is like negative political advertising: everybody says they disapprove of it, and everybody responds to it.)

Consider the findings of the latest survey by the Pew Research Center, released Jan. 11, which indicate that roughly two-thirds of Americans now believe there are "strong conflicts" between rich and poor in our nation. Two years ago, when Pew did a similar survey, 47% of respondents said there were strong rich-poor conflicts.

Consider a U.S. Commerce Department report from last August showing that corporate profits increased by 8.3% in 2009 and 10.8% in 2010, two years when wages continued to decline as a percentage of national income. "That continued decline may help explain the economic worries of many Americans who have jobs but still fear they are falling behind," New York Times reporter Floyd Norris observed.

And consider the declining ratio of employment to population: in June 2007, some 63% of adults were employed; two years later, 59.4% were employed; and in June 2011, 58.2% had jobs.

No millionaire has ever looked to me for advice, but if I were Mitt Romney, I'd be careful using that "envy" line. A 58-year-old man who's been out of work for two years does not want to be scolded for believing the system is stacked against him. And a single mom who's lost her home to foreclosure does not want a lecture on the virtues of a system that bailed out the banks first.

Republicans like Gov. Romney believe this nation can grow itself out of the deep hole it's in, while moderates of both major parties -- Hello, Alan Simpson! Hello, Erskine Bowles! -- believe a mixture of tax increases, tax reform, and restraints on big entitlement programs like Medicare will do the trick.

The GOP and its supporters will spend tens of millions of dollars trying to convince Americans Obama is a crypto-socialist bent on turning the U.S. into what Romney calls a "European-style entitlement society," while Obama, exploiting the tremendous, natural advantages of an incumbent president, will plant himself firmly on that middle/moderate, Simpson-Bowles-like ground.

Amazing, isn't it, how much this presidential election is starting to look like the 2010 gubernatorial election in Massachusetts, when another aggressive, business-savvy Republican took on a centrist Democrat with middling job approval ratings?

Will Romney Ever Achieve Total Proficiency as a Dispenser of Red Meat?

2012-01-11T13:03:00.000-08:00

Mitt Romney delivered the goods last night during his victory speech in New Hampshire and the audience ate it up. Much of what he had to say was lifted from his standard stump speech and TV commercials, so he unloaded the words fairly easily, one fastball after another to Obama's head. He said:

"President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial."

"Our campaign is about more than replacing a President, it is about saving the soul of America."

"President Obama wants to fundamentally transform America."

"He wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society."

"This President takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe."

"Internationally, President Obama has adopted an appeasement strategy."

"He apologizes for America."

"If this election is a bidding war for who can promise more benefits, then I'm not your President. You have that President today."

It was strong stuff, stuff meant to call forth strong emotions, some of which the audience would not be consciously aware of, such as fear and resentment of a different-looking leader with a very foreign name.

I have a theory that Romney doesn't really believe a lot of what he's saying on the campaign trail, that he is uncomfortable with the rhetorical demands of red-meat politicking, and that his discomfort often shows in the smiles and eyes that hold something back, and in the posture that can suggest a freshman at his first dance. He's simply not good at faking sincerity, which might tell us his parents did a good job putting some bedrock under his character.

Mitt Romney is a highly intelligent man. He earned an MBA and a law degree simultaneously at Harvard. He made a fortune for himself and his colleagues at Bain Capital by putting together solid business deals. He's a "deals" superstar. He succeeded because he can look at the world dispassionately, evaluate events objectively, and make decisions bloodlessly on facts and numbers alone. Those who have worked with Romney say you can never give him too much data.

So the first time he said in public that his election is tantamount to "saving the soul of America," it must have been hard for him. He was crossing a big threshold, proclaiming an historical mission of national salvation, which is something they don't practice much at Harvard Business School and Bain Capital.

I remember a story about Romney, soon after taking office as governor of Massachusetts, visiting a state representative who had graduated from Harvard Business School and asking her, "What is the value of intelligence in this building (the State House)?" (It was explained to me that "value of intelligence" is a term used at Harvard to denote the quality of information one receives from others in any given situation. High-quality intelligence is therefore the truest and most reliable by objective standards. People making business deals obviously have a burning need for intelligence like that.) The rep answered Romney by saying, "Governor, the value of intelligence as you understand it does not exist in this building." I'm sure Romney appreciated the rep's candor even as he shuddered within.

Romney is now far removed from the world of business. He not only functions full-time in a world where the value of intelligence, as he once crucially understood it, does not exist, but also has become, of necessity, a skilled player in that world, even as he paradoxically stakes his claim to the Presidency on his business acumen.

Fiscal Policies Championed by Tom Finneran Helped See Us Through the Great Recession

2011-12-29T12:57:00.000-08:00

As 2011 becomes history, there are definite signs the economy of Massachusetts is moving in a better direction. For example:

- Some 5,000 new jobs were created in November, (the second straight month of employment gains), pushing the state's unemployment rate down to 7%.
- On Jan. 1, the Massachusetts income tax rate will drop from 5.3% to 5.25%, a change that will put an extra $110 to $115 million in taxpayers' pockets next year. (Income taxes are coming down because tax receipts rose in 2011 at a sufficient pace to trigger a mandated decrease that went on the books in November, 2000, when voters passed a tax cut ballot referendum. If our economy had not improved, the rate would have stayed at 5.3%.)

So maybe this is a good time to recognize one of the unsung heroes of the Bay State turnaround: Tom Finneran, former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives. How, you rightly ask, did someone who left office in 2004 help our state rebound from an economic crisis that began in 2008 and quickly led to the worst economic conditions our nation has experienced since the Great Depression? The answer is found in three words: Rainy Day Fund.

During the 1990s, and particularly in the second half of the decade, the Massachusetts economy was booming. Revenue flowed into the state treasury like a surging river in springtime. Every year seemed to produce surpluses in the hundreds of millions of dollars in the budget of the Commonwealth. As tax revenue proliferated, so did the ideas for spending that windfall -- every penny of it -- in the legislature.

However, Finneran, who had mastered the intricacies of the budget as House Chairman of Ways and Means before being elected Speaker in 1996, always insisted that a truly significant portion of those surpluses be set aside in the Stabilization Fund, or Rainy Day Fund, as it is more commonly known. His strong and principled voice on this matter, coupled with the formidable powers of the speakership, which Finneran showed a knack for making progressively more formidable, were enough to carry the argument year after year. Eventually, the idea that Massachusetts should have the largest possible Rainy Day Fund became Beacon Hill orthodoxy, to the point that the fund topped $3 billion by the time Finneran left office.

At the end of Fiscal Year 2008, (July 1, 2007-June 30, 2008), as the Great Recession was just starting, the Rainy Day Fund stood at $2.3 billion. Over the next three years, the state spent that account down to $700 million as it made up for recession-driven revenue declines and dealt with a host of problems related to the poor economy.

Had the state not had $1.6 billion available to deal with the Great Recession, conditions in Massachusetts would have been far worse than they actually were, which were quite bad enough as they were. Cuts to vital programs, such as Medicaid, would have been devastating, and employment in the public sector would have been slashed much deeper than it actually was. There are literally thousands of teachers, social workers, police officers and firefighters who kept their jobs, and thus their ability to care for their families, because Massachusetts had a big Rainy Day Fund when the economy tanked in 2008-09.

Since Tom Finneran was more responsible than any other elected governmental leader for embedding the Rainy Day ethos in modern state fiscal policy, it is no stretch to credit him with helping to save the state from economic ruin and to make it possible for the state to set a course toward economic recovery, whose signs we discern at the dawn of 2012.

Finneran was never a really popular statewide figure. There are many who consider him to have been an ironfisted, autocratic and needlessly pugnacious. And there are some who relished his fall from grace in the years after his speakership, considering it his just desserts. But there is no critic who can take an ounce of credit from him for having been right in a huge way on how to build a budget and plan for the future. No critic can diminish the satisfaction he is entitled to for having created the circumstances that allowed so many citizens of Massachusetts to dodge the worst blows of the Great Recession.

As Michael Cahill, the former rep from Beverly who served in the House with Finneran, puts it, "He (Finneran), more than anyone else, deserves the credit for enforcing on us the right things -- so many of the right things -- we did on the budget in the 1990s and the early-2000s. You cannot overstate the positive impact Tom Finneran had on the fiscal health of Massachusetts."

So if you and your family are breathing a little easier, feeling a little more confident about the future, this New Year's Eve, consider raising a glass to Tom Finneran.

For Purposes of Prognostication, View Senate Race Through the Prism of High School

2011-12-22T11:50:00.000-08:00

"Running for public office is no different from running for senior class president in high school," I remember a legislator telling me years ago.

In reply, I said something intelligent like, "What do you mean?" And he said, "Do you have anything between those big ears of yours? Popularity! It's simple: every election is a popularity contest."

In that context, consider the 2012 election for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts as a way to answer the question, "Would Elizabeth 'Professor' Warren have beaten Scott 'Centerfold' Brown for senior class president?" Ask yourself, "Who would have won if Warren and Brown had been in my senior class," and you'll have the answer that everyone else will have to wait until the night of Nov. 6, 2012, for.

I grew up in a city where Republicans were as rare as nuns in a nudist colony, but I'm pretty sure Brown would have beaten Warren at my school pretty easily. And judging by what I heard historian Doris Kearns Goodwin say yesterday on "Morning Joe," I'm inferring that Brown would have beaten Warren at Kearns Goodwin's school, too.

"...we need Scott Browns in this world," said she, who once worked for Lyndon Johnson and used to teach at Harvard, and who is, let's face it, pretty much a liberal darling. "If there were more Scott Browns in more states and more cities, then perhaps this partisanship (in Congress) would not be as dysfunctional as it is because he's able to cross party lines, he's able to think independently."

Within hours of Kearns Goodwin's appearance on "Morning Joe," the Scott Brown for U.S. Senate Committee had issued a press release drawing attention to her comments and using them as a starting point for a proclamation of Brown's bona fides as an Independent with a capital I. The release quoted "Brown's aides" (unnamed) as saying the former state lawmaker "has shown an independent streak since the day he defied political oddsmakers and won a January 2010 special election to succeed the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion who had kept the seat in Democratic hands for 46 years."

Elsewhere, unnamed "campaign aides" were quoted as saying, "It's about more than politics for Brown. The moves are part of his campaign promise to be an independent voice and moderate voter in the Senate...Aides rattle off a laundry list of examples showing Brown bucking his party from his earliest days in the Senate: he voted for the new START treaty with Russia, voted to repeal the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy banning gays in the military. He also voted against Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan and an effort to defund Planned Parenthood."

And if clueless readers had somehow missed the point that Scott Brown is an Independent guy with a capital I, the release ended on this note: "Scott Brown has never been a right-wing ideologue," said one campaign aide. "He has always approached each issue with an open mind and independent manner, and votes in the best interests of his constituents and state, regardless of party affiliation."

Brown didn't go from the Massachusetts Senate to the U.S. Senate in 2010 because all the Republicans voted for him, and Warren won't move from Cambridge to Washington, D.C. next year if all the Democrats vote for her. There are not enough registered Democrats or Republicans in the Bay State to tip an electoral contest to any of their respective statewide candidates. Independents rule! As of this past spring, 36.5% of all registered voters were Democrats and 11.3% were Republicans, whereas 51.9% were "unenrolled," which is to say they consider themselves independent. And that's a category that has been growing every year for a long time now.

According to the Elections Division of the office of the Massachusetts Secretary of State, Bill Galvin, independents are heavily concentrated in the central and western parts of the state, and are least likely to be found in urban areas. Every suburban community seems to have a high percentage of unenrolled voters. For example, in Plymouth, the largest community in the state, territory-wise, 60% of voters are independents.

You're bound to see Scott Brown in his pick-up truck cruising the burbs next year, but you'll also see him stuck in traffic in Boston a lot because that's where there are tons of Democrats. He'll want to keep them in tune to his song of independent political expression or persuade them to join his cool kids choir.

Judging by what Boston Mayor Tom Menino, long a poohbah of the Democratic Party, has said this year about Brown, Ted Kennedy's successor has made serious inroads in the Hub. Please recall Menino emerging from a breakfast meeting with Brown at the Parkman House in January and telling reporters, "He's a Republican and I'm a Democrat, but those days are over." And don't forget Menino telling the Boston Globe in early September, "Scott Brown has something about him that people gravitate to," and then wondering if Elizabeth Warren's candidacy is "saleable." He said, "Do I know she can be saleable? I don't know that. But there are some people -- who have greater political minds than mine -- who believe so. But I think you have to be out there and squeeze the flesh and see how they feel."

Saleable. Isn't that a synonym for popular?

The Money We Could Safely Not Spend on Health Care Is Beyond Belief

2011-12-20T13:05:00.000-08:00

In retrospect, it was probably a mistake for President Obama to nominate a former Harvard School of Public Health professor and former Harvard Community Health Plan vice president as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS), formerly known as the Health Care Financing Administration, in Washington, D.C.

It didn't matter that Professor Donald M. Berwick, M.D., a longtime resident of Newton, MA, was a well respected pediatrician, that he had distinguished himself as a medical researcher, and that he had spent 19 years as head of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a nationally respected organization. His Harvard connection probably doomed him from the start with the Republicans in the U.S. Senate, where Dr. Berwick's nomination had to be confirmed.

The Senate Republicans are led by a man from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, who has said his main job is to make sure Obama is a one-term president. They dug deep into Dr. Berwick's record, decided he was not sufficiently enamored of free-market, entrepreneurial health care, and closed ranks against his nomination. To avoid a nasty confirmation fight he might lose, Obama installed Dr. Berwick on the top perch at CMMS in a "recess appointment," meaning the president waited until Congress recessed and gave him the job by executive order. A recess appointment, however, is always limited in duration; Dr. Berwick reached his limit at the end of November, seventeen months after he started.

During an interview granted to the New York Times while preparing to leave Washington and return to Massachusetts, Dr. Berwick was asked what percentage of health care spending in the U.S. he considered wasteful? Between 20 and 30 percent, he said, defining waste as any expenditure that produces no benefit to a patient.

Dr. Berwick enumerated five reasons for what he termed the "extremely high level of waste" in the U.S. system: overtreatment of patients, the failure of health care providers to coordinate all the care given to a patient, the administrative complexity of the system itself, burdensome rules, and outright fraud.

If all that waste were to be eliminated, the federal government could save up to a quarter of a trillion dollars ($250 billion) on the Medicaid and Medicare programs!

Of course, it's unrealistic to think that all of the waste in our health care system could ever be eliminated. But billions of dollars in savings are there for the taking -- and should be taken, if we can finally get serious about critically examining how and what we spend on health care.

CMMS officials should be able to talk, for example, about Medicare reimbursements for treatments of dubious value to terminally ill patients without being accused of setting up "Death Panels." And they should be able to talk about the costs of defensive medicine, i.e., diagnostic tests ordered by physicians worried about protecting themselves from malpractice suits, without plaintiffs' attorney groups crying about the erosion of patient rights.

Ask any adult you know over the age of 40 who has good health insurance if he has ever been sent for a medical test that was, in retrospect, not needed or justified, and the chances are high the answer will be yes. My own personal favorite concerns the time I was given an ultrasonic scan of my carotid artery during a follow-up assessment for an episode of vertigo, a problem that had initially resulted in an extensive work-up, including a CT scan of my head, in the emergency department of a prominent Boston teaching hospital. The co-pay I had to make on that ultrasound was well over $200, which has served to prevent this memory from fading in my mind.

"Unnecessary" is a term that also covers a lot of the medical treatments routinely given to insured people today. Consider, for example, the report in the September, 2011, edition of the American Journal of Public Health, ("The Prophylactic Extraction of Third Molars: A Public Health Hazard").

Ten million third molars, or wisdom teeth, as they are commonly known, are extracted from approximately five million patients in the U.S. per year, at an annual cost of over $3 billion, yet two-thirds of those extractions are medically unnecessary, according to the author of the article, Jay W. Friedman, a retired California dentist.

If Dr. Friedman is correct, we could save $2 billion a year on wisdom tooth extraction surgery, and spare millions of patients needless pain, complications, and the unintended (and sometimes permanent) injuries to the jaw associated with this procedure.

To talk about such a thing would risk the ire of the oral surgeons who make a very good living yanking wisdom teeth from the backs of people's jaws, just as Dr. Berwick incurred the wrath of Mitch McConnell for once having dared to say something favorable about the national health system of Great Britain.

It's a Brain-Killer We Can't Wish Away: Controlling the Cost of Health Care

2011-12-16T12:38:00.000-08:00

Five years ago, when Massachusetts made history by becoming the first state to adopt a system of universal health coverage, every mover and shaker at the State House acknowledged the system would last only if they could somehow find a way some day to control the cost of health care. Governor Deval Patrick would like that day to be in January.

"The building is full of good intentions," he told the State House News Service (SHNS) back in October. "We need action."

To show that the public wants action immediately, the governor cited a survey by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation indicating that 78% of respondents considered the high cost of health care to be a "crisis" or a "major problem," and that 88% described it as important for state government to deal with.

The governor filed a comprehensive proposal for health care cost containment in February of this year.

"We've had a bill pending for a year," Patrick told the SHNS. "We've been talking about and worrying about and fussing about this issue for a long time and we need action. The legislature has been working very hard at the committee level on a bill. I've been briefed on where they are. They need to move it to the floor sooner rather than later, and we need to take this up.

"My point," he continued, "is we've been at this for a long time. The consensus in the market is building in favor of moving away from fee-for-service (health care) toward 'medical homes' or global payment, basically whole-person care. And the consensus seems to be not only is that cost-effective care, but better quality care."

Legislative leaders, however, say the House and Senate will not be ready to vote on the governor's bill when the legislature reconvenes in January.

"We're not ready," Lynn Rep Steve Walsh, House chair of the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, told the SHNS. "It's a complicated issue. It affects people's health and it's our largest employer."

Walsh added, "The governor's advocating for something he feels is important. I applaud him. But that public support he's talking about for change will erode very quickly if we don't do this right. We should not put quality or substance off to get something done quickly."

While State House leaders are focused on improving the cost structure of universal coverage, which has resulted in 98% of Massachusetts residents having some kind of health insurance, other players are sharply criticizing the system and arguing it should be replaced by a single-payer system, or "Medicare for All," as it is sometimes called.

A report issued in October by Mass-Care and Massachusetts Physicians for a National Health Program asserted that rising costs tied universal health care have hit poor and middle class families especially hard and have burdened small businesses with expenses unique to Massachusetts, thus putting them at a competitive disadvantage.

The report also found that the new system had: (a) fattened the state's health care bureaucracy, (b) made the shortage of primary care physicians worse, (c) fed the growth of high-deductible health plans, meaning consumers have paid more out of their own pockets for care every year, (d) increased the number of people who are "underinsured," and (e) created a "financial crisis" for hospitals and clinics that care mainly for low-income and minority populations.

Mass-Care and Massachusetts Physicians for a National Health Program would like a single-payer system, i.e., one funded solely by government-collected revenue, to replace the Bay State's universal coverage system, which features a patchwork of private and public insurance products and rests on a mandate on all adults to obtain coverage, the same mandate found in President Obama's national health care reform bill of 2009, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and yes, the same mandate that White House-hungry Republicans will not stop shedding I-fear-for-the-future-of-my-country, crocodile tears over.

Yesterday, there was a hearing at the State House on four bills touching upon single-payer health care, including An Act Establishing Medicare for All in Massachusetts, sponsored by Senator James Eldridge, Democrat of Acton, and several other legislators. Everyone who spoke during the three-hour-long hearing was in favor of the bill, suggesting that most Libertarians, Tea Partiers and Republicans had better things to do that day, like Christmas shopping...in New Hampshire.

Dr. Leo Stollbach testified to the growing support among physicians here for single-payer health care. Today, he said, 41% of Massachusetts Medical Society members favor such a system; two years ago, that figure was 34%. So the new world of Massachusetts health care, born in 2006 during Mitt Romney's governorship and destined to serve as Obama's template in 2009, hasn't made the docs a whole lot happier. (Question: Is an unhappy doc a less-effective caregiver?)

The most significant witness of the day, in my opinion, was Senator Dan Wolf, Democrat of Harwich, one of the most successful capitalists to serve in the Massachusetts legislature in modern times. As co-founder 24 years ago of Cape Air, a regional air line that cornered the market on summertime air travel to the Cape and Islands and currently employs more than a thousand people, Wolf could give lessons in entrepreneurism and job creation to Romney. One of the big reasons Wolf wants single-payer in Massachusetts is the liberating effect it would have on the small businesses that create by far the largest share of new jobs.

"The biggest single inhibitor, the biggest ball and chain around small business growth is the cost and complexity of health care," Wolf told his colleagues.

If a guy who built an airline can see that, why can't the Bain consultants and their ilk see it?

NEXT: Waste in Health Care Spending

With One Last Scheme in Him, Ex-Legislator/City Manager Didn't Get Far

2011-12-12T13:42:00.000-08:00

A federal judge made the right decision early this month when he sentenced Bernard J. Tully, a former member of the Massachusetts Senate and Lowell city manager, to four months of home confinement for wire fraud and ordered him to pay $18,000 in restitution. There isn't much point in locking up a non-violent octogenarian who takes five different prescription meds a day.

If Tully had been sent to jail, however, he probably would have become a minor celebrity wherever they put him. The younger convicts, which is to say everyone else, would have admired his brass, if not his brains.

They might have even regarded him as an inspiration. (I can imagine one of them wrapping an arm around Tully the first week and saying, "Gramps, you're the best! Because of you, I now know there's no age limit to being a grifter. I know I can be making scores when I'm walking with a cane and shouting at people to talk into my good ear.")

It is an unusual tale -- the kind that would be dismissed as implausible if it turned up in fiction --that led to Tully pleading guilty to wire fraud in the U.S. District Court in Boston. According to the office of the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, Tully admitted he devised a scheme to defraud a Boston area businessman out of approximately $18,000 by falsely representing that he and another co-conspirator were using the funds to bribe public officials to keep the Lowell office of the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) as a tenant in a building owned by the businessman.

After the Registry announced in July, 2009, that it would be closing its Lowell office, Tully reportedly approached the businessman with an offer to be the intermediary in a scheme that would deliver payments to a certain public official in the Merrimack Valley in exchange for the official exerting influence on the agency to reverse its decision and keep the Lowell branch open.

It was a total bluff on the part of Tully, who served in the Senate from 1971 to 1979 and basically ran the city of Lowell as its appointed, professional manager from 1979 to 1987.

He had no connection with the public official in question, and had never approached that person about being part of a deal that prosecutors later dubbed "a perverse fraud."

As an engine of deception, the scheme quickly sputtered. And the hapless Tully had no idea it wasn't working. Shortly after his first meeting with Tully, the businessman contacted the FBI, told investigators everything, and agreed to play along until enough evidence could be gathered to charge Tully with a crime.

Sadly, this was not the first time Tully found himself on the wrong side of the law: in 1989, he was convicted of attempting to extort money from a Lowell car dealer who wanted to obtain a piece of municipally-owned land while Tully was city manager.

"It's like you didn't get the message the first time," Judge Patti B. Saris scolded him during sentencing on Dec. 1.

Like all of us, Tully is not a one-dimensional figure; he has a good side. You have to feel bad for him, at least a little bit, what with his poor health, his advanced years (he will turn 85 in January), and the burdens he carries as the primary caregiver to his disabled 59-year-old son, who suffered a bad stroke seven years ago.

Judge Saris made allowances for Tully's obligations when she ruled that he could leave his Dracut home between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. over the next four months only to visit with and care for his son.

With winter coming on, Tully probably would not have been going out much at night anyway, so that was a gentle restriction. Much harder for Tully will be that restitution of $18,000. My guess is, he survives on Social Security and has no money left, which is why he probably came up with the crazy idea of a way-over-the-hill political operative shaking down a landlord and pretend-bribing a public official in the first place.

Taking the Totality of DiMasi's Record, Was an Eight-Year Sentence Justified?

2011-12-05T12:34:00.000-08:00

Sal DiMasi grew up in a cold-water flat in the North End of Boston, sharing tight quarters with his parents, two brothers and his Italian grandparents, who had emigrated to the U.S. years before. He was a good student and a good athlete.

When he graduated from Christopher Columbus High School, a now-closed Catholic school in the North End, with the Class of 1963, he went straight to Boston College, a Jesuit school, and received a bachelor's degree in accounting in 1967. Three years later, he graduated from Suffolk University Law School and went to work as an assistant district attorney, prosecuting criminals in Suffolk County.

This was an unusual background for someone who would eventually become a champion of liberal causes in the Massachusetts legislature.

Look at the totality of DiMasi's legislative career, (1979-2009), however, and you see he was never afraid to take up a controversial or unpopular cause, nor reluctant to help someone simply because his heart ached for them, not because that person was a big shot or could do something for him in return. He seemed instinctively drawn to the little guy, the underdog.

Arline Isaacson, who co-chairs the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Caucus, remembers how DiMasi stepped bravely into the spotlight in 1983, when he was a member of House leadership by virtue of his chairmanship of the Committee on Banks and Banking, to advocate for the Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights Bill. "This kind of legislation might not sound very controversial today," Isaacson wrote in a pre-sentencing letter to Judge Mark Wolf of the U.S. District Court in Boston, "but in the early-1980s, public officials who spoke on our behalf were frequently the target of scorn, derision and political attack by their colleagues, their constituents and the press."

Sal DiMasi, she told Judge Wolf, "was one of the few legislators in a leadership position willing to step up to the plate and advocate forcefully for the bill." The former House Speaker seemed to be especially attuned to the effects of discrimination, Isaacson came to believe, because of his experiences growing up "at a time when Italians in Boston were still the butt of jokes and ridicule."

For Judge Wolf, Isaacson recounted how DiMasi "was always willing, even eager, to help with legislation that increased affordable housing or supported programs for the poor and the needy" in the City of Boston -- "and not simply for those in his district, but statewide." DiMasi "could have limited his efforts only to those bills that affected his own legislative district," Isaacson noted. "Instead, he went beyond narrow parochial interests to assist with measures that helped the entire city, and most especially people in need, regardless of their address. He did not have to do that. He gained nothing from it. But he wanted to do the right thing."

Similarly, Isaacson said, DiMasi stood by the gay community in the mid-1980s, when the AIDS epidemic struck; voted in 1985 against a proposed ban on adoptions by gay parents; and fought hard to establish the right for persons of the same gender to marry in the mid-2000s. "He derived absolutely no personal benefit by working as tenaciously as he did," she wrote. "He used his political 'collateral' to help a community of strangers, not himself. He could have done significantly less and GLBTS would still have heralded him as a hero. One thing is very clear, we would not have retained the right to marry without Sal DiMasi."

Isaacson began her letter to Judge Wolf, who subsequently sentenced DiMasi to eight years in prison, by asserting the "portrait painted of Sal during his trial, as a legislator motivated by self-interest, varies markedly from my experiences with him," and ended by saying, "Sal was driven by a deep-seated caring and a fervent commitment to a kind of 'Tikkun Olam' -- to make the world a better place."

Last Wednesday, DiMasi entered a prison medical facility in Lexington, Kentucky. He probably won't see the outside for five-and-a-half or six years -- if he gets lucky. If, however, the kind of luck he had with Judge Wolf continues, DiMasi may never get out. He is 66 years old and has a history of heart ills. Eight years could be a death sentence for someone like him.

Is eight years too much for what DiMasi did? One can make that case, especially considering that DiMasi lost his reputation, savings and pension long before he lost his freedom. The government cannot make Sal DiMasi a more destitute or a more broken human being than he is today.

By repeatedly helping persons, organizations and causes far removed from his North End base, and by spending his political capital on unpopular causes and in battles that were not his own, DiMasi proved that he genuinely cared about others, that he had courage, and was not a selfish man. He deserved more compassion than he got in Judge Wolf's court. Better it would have been, in my opinion, for Wolf to sentence him to three years in prison, followed by five years working as a paralegal in an agency providing legal services to the indigent.

J.W. Carney, Jr., now a prominent Massachusetts defense attorney, encountered DiMasi in his (Carney's) early days as a public defender in Boston. Carney attested in a letter to Judge Wolf that DiMasi "was an excellent attorney, who always was well-prepared, knowledgeable about the facts and law of the case, and articulate in his presentations."

When Carney later became a prosecutor, he dealt with DiMasi lawyer-to-lawyer. "...his (DiMasi's) ethics were always of the highest order," Carney wrote. "My colleagues and I could accept his representations without question because they had been proven to be accurate in every instance."

Carney's letter for DiMasi tugs at the heart as it describes DiMasi's meetings with clients and family members in the hallways after court had adjourned. "It was clear," Carney said, that many of DiMasi's clients at that time "were indigent or close to it, and he was not representing them by court appointment."

Carney "often saw his (DiMasi's) clients and their families emotionally giving their thanks to him outside the courtroom after the resolution of a case," he wrote. "It was not unusual for the encounter to end with the family promising to pay Attorney DiMasi, and his replying in a warm way, 'Do what you can, don't worry about it.' "

Three years from now, the Commonwealth would be better served by DiMasi deploying his legal skills for the benefit of the poor of Boston, Springfield, New Bedford or Lawrence, as opposed to DiMasi going down, down, down in the mindless confines of a prison far from home.

DiMasi 'Cared Deeply About the Disadvantaged,' Mayor Mike Readily Attests

2011-11-30T13:07:00.000-08:00

Before leaving office of his own accord early in January, 2004, Mike Albano was one of the giants of Western Massachusetts politics.

In his four terms as mayor of Springfield, "Mayor Mike," as he was popularly known, proved to be both a strong hands-on manager and a high-minded, inclusive leader of his decidedly downtrodden city. He also possessed that most valuable and ineffable of political attributes: a first-class temperament. He was warm, approachable and light-hearted. No stranger was ever afraid to walk up to Albano. In a crowded elevator, he'd be the first guy to get you laughing with a wry comment, and by the time he arrived at his floor, everyone wanted to shake his hand good-bye.

I got to know Albano in the late-1990s when we both happened to be in the gallery of the Massachusetts House on random spring evenings when the lower branch was working through its version of the state budget for the next fiscal year. There's lots of dead time in the budget deliberations, long stretches when nothing really happens, and it seemed to be the most natural thing for Mayor Mike to chat up the people hanging in the gallery with him, waiting for "their" budget items to be taken up. Like all of our older urban centers, Springfield depends heavily on state aid, so Albano was a regular at the State House, a charming and persuasive advocate for his city.

It turned out that Albano, who holds a master's in public administration from the University of Hartford and was a probation officer before being elected mayor in 1995, knew and liked my older brother, Jim, who was a college dean in Connecticut at the time and had hired Albano to teach some courses at night in the state college system. This accelerated the initial conversation, which was already going pretty well, and always gave us something to discuss later when we'd bump into each other at the State House or on the street in Boston. Like me, my brother Jim is a great admirer of Mayor Mike; also like me, my big brother is disappointed Mayor Mike walked away from elective politics entirely. We both think he would have been a good candidate for state-wide office.

While walking the halls of the State House on Springfield's behalf, Albano got to know many legislators well, including Rep. Sal DiMasi of Boston's North End. And, in Sal, he apparently found not just a sympathetic ear but also a man of power who was willing to use it to help a large group of people who could never vote for him, the citizens of Springfield.

As Albano put it in his pre-sentencing letter (Aug. 25, 2011) to Judge Mark L. Wolf of the U.S. District Court in Boston, "While he (DiMasi) had no direct political interest in the day-to-day operations of my city, his involvement at the State House was critical and he always answered the call for assistance."

Albano's appeal for leniency to Judge Wolf continued, "As you know, Springfield, like other urban areas, has a multitude of problems. Representative DiMasi was extremely helpful, along with the western Massachusetts legislative delegation, in assisting the City in areas of economic development; police grants; open space grants; education reform dollars; after-school programs and other human service initiatives which directly impacted the quality of life of our citizens. In many cases, he was the person to whom I went to make things happen for the city. He asked for nothing in return.

"For example: Representative DiMasi played a major role -- in a very quiet fashion -- in the appropriation of funding for the new Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and MassMutual Convention Center -- approximately $75 million of economic development funds creating hundreds of employment opportunities and changing the image of Springfield. There were no lobbyists or corporate bigwigs pushing the agenda -- just Sal DiMasi offering a helping hand to a needy city.

"Perhaps his major contribution to the City, however, was the saving of the Southwest Community Health Center. The Center, which serves thousands of low-income citizens with their health care needs, was on the brink of financial collapse.

"Representative DiMasi was instrumental in putting together a supplemental appropriation of nearly $1 million -- which essentially saved the agency -- and allowed Southwest to continue its health care services to the most needy citizens in the community, which continues to operate to this day.

"Your Honor, the Sal DiMasi that I know is a man who cared deeply about the disadvantaged. He was always willing to assist for the benefit of the citizens of Springfield and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

"I have been advised by some to expect retaliation for writing this letter of recommendation for Speaker DiMasi. I put that advice aside, however, because the actions of this extraordinary public servant reveal the totality of the man; the values he espoused; and, his record of accomplishment, all of which are important for your consideration at sentencing.

"Standing up for what is right and for those who are down is something of great value and something I learned a long time ago. I know Sal DiMasi shares those values. Now he is down and needs support from those he supported in the past."

Pre-Sentencing Letters Drive Home the Tragic Dimension of the DiMasi Case

2011-11-29T11:17:00.000-08:00

Sal DiMasi, the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, must report tomorrow to a federal prison in Kentucky to begin serving an eight-year sentence for accepting bribes in the Cognos software sale scandal. It will be a sad day not only for DiMasi and the members of his family, but also for the thousands of people he helped during more than 30 years in public life. The man has a legion of friends and supporters.

Before DiMasi was sentenced a couple of months ago, 44 persons took the trouble to write individual letters to Mark Wolf, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court in Boston, telling him about the Sal DiMasi they know well and asking him please to be lenient in sentencing. It's hard to read those letters and not be struck, again, by the tragedy of a man who did an extraordinary amount of good in his life, became one of the most powerful politicians in the state, was widely loved for his warmth and generosity and ebullience, and threw it all away with one large, stupid mistake.

Because those letters reveal so much about the genuine DiMasi and how he conducted his life, and because they remind us, inadvertently but poignantly, of how far DiMasi tumbled in his fall from grace, I am going to reprint extensive excerpts from three of them this week. I'm starting with the letter from Jim Aloisi, a prominent Boston attorney and former Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation, and will follow with one from Mike Albano, the former mayor of Springfield, and one from Arline Isaacson, co-chair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus.

"I've never written a letter regarding a proposed sentencing before," Aloisi began, "but I feel compelled to add my voice to those who find the requested sentencing (note added: 11 years) of former Speaker Sal DiMasi to be inordinately harsh, not reflective of the kind of person Sal is, and lacking in consideration of the many good works and positive examples of principled leadership that marked his time in office.

"I have known Sal DiMasi for close to two decades. Sal asked me to write his inaugural address when he became Speaker. I remember clearly, as we spoke about the content of the speech, how deeply focused he was on reminding himself that he came from humble beginnings, and that he would strive mightily to represent not just his district, but those who were chronically left behind by society -- the poor, the elderly, and those who are disenfranchised as a result of race, sexual orientation or other factors.

"I have thought about that experience as I have observed the trial and its aftermath. I don't know anything about the facts and circumstances that were the subject of the recent trial, but here is what I do know: Sal DiMasi was a good Speaker, a thoughtful man, a progressive thinker, a man who had a deep commitment to improving the lives of people who all too often do not have a voice in the halls of our State House. That is why I believe he championed health care reform. That is why I believe he held firm on making marriage equality the law. That is why I believe he held firmly against a gaming bill -- believing strongly, as I know he did, that gaming is nothing more than a tax on the poor and the middle class, simply another way to prey on those who have no access to power, no means to lobby legislators. People in Massachusetts are better off today, and their children will be better off in the future, because Sal DiMasi had the commitment and the vision and the courage to stop gaming, and to enact health care reform and marriage equality.

"...When I was State Transportation Secretary in 2009, I led an effort to raise the state gas tax as a way to increase revenues to support our aging transportation infrastructure. The gas tax increase would have enabled critical state-of-good-repair work, and would have improved funding for public transportation throughout the state -- an important mobility and social and economic justice issue. This was, as we all know, very unpopular politically, but Sal was prepared to support it with all the strength of his office. He would gain nothing but political pain from his support, but he understands that he was chosen to be Speaker to make tough decisions, to risk unpopularity, and to lead. I consider that kind of moral and political courage to be rare, but Sal had it in ample quantity....

"The Sal DiMasi I know is a person who ought to have more to give -- more to contribute -- to society. A harsh sentence in this matter may satisfy some rigid notion of justice, but I am reminded of the wisdom of Shakespeare's Portia, that mercy is 'an attribute to God himself/and earthly power doth then show likest God's/when mercy seasons justice.'

"If ever there was an occasion when mercy should season justice, it is this one. With respect, I would ask for your consideration that such wisdom ought to have a place in the sentencing decision you are about to make -- taking the entirety of the man and his life and his public record into account."

A Real 'Government Takeover of Health Care' Might Have Worked Better for Dems

2011-11-22T13:34:00.000-08:00

The National Republican Congressional Committee sent out separate but identical press releases earlier this month targeting three Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts for their support of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, although the committee never referred to the bill by its formal name. Instead, it described it repeatedly as "the government takeover of healthcare."

The occasion for the release was the success on Tuesday, Nov. 8, of a ballot referendum in Ohio against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare," as Republicans and many others delight in calling it. Sixty-six percent of Ohio voters gave a thumbs-up to the non-binding question against the bill.

The National Republican Congressional Committee built its press release, issued Nov. 11, on the premise that the citizens of Massachusetts need to know that "voters (in Ohio) reject the government takeover of healthcare Keating defended," Keating being the former state senator, former Norfolk County district attorney and current Congressman from the 10th Massachusetts District, Bill Keating. Here's the first paragraph of the release:

"Massachusetts Democrat Bill Keating proudly voted to keep the government takeover of healthcare in place earlier this year (Roll Call #14, 1/19/11), putting him at odds with American voters who continue to voice their strong disapproval. Ohio voters Tuesday sent a message that is having ramifications across the nation after every single one of the 88 counties voted to block the Democrats' healthcare takeover in their state. Keating's defense of the widely unpopular law will certainly strike a strong contrast with voters who increasingly recognize that this government takeover has done more harm than good."

So happy was the National Republican Congressional Committee with this line of attack that it used it simultaneously on U.S. Reps. John Tierney of Salem and Nicki Tsongas of Lowell, and God knows how many other Democrats across the nation, putting all of the same words in each release and changing only the names. Thus, the headlines became, "Voters Reject the Government Takeover of Healthcare Tierney Defended," and "Voters Reject the Government Takeover of Healthcare Tsongas Defended," etc., which showed, I guess, that Republicans are as human as the rest of us, for who among us, after coming up with a such a self-satisfyingly-clever line, can ever restrict its delivery to one occasion?

Each release ended on a mournful note to the effect that Keating, Tierney, Tsongas, et al., aren't "listening" to America. "Americans continue to voice their disapproval of the Democrats' government takeover of healthcare," it said, "but Bill Keating isn't listening. Instead of defending the law earlier this year, Keating should have recognized that the massive healthcare takeover, which is destroying jobs and seeing premiums rise, is making matters worse."

At first blush, one might think the National Republican Congressional Committee's use of the "takeover" formulation was a tad heavy-handed. No fewer than eight times in the 470-word release were the words "government takeover" used. However, I can personally attest to its effectiveness. By the time I was through reading it, my id was whispering insistently to my ego, "Obama seizes health care. Obama bad. Must be stopped."

(Pssssst: Does anyone in the Republican Party remember that Teddy Roosevelt, the rough-riding Republican of Rushmore fame, was the first politician of national standing to advocate for a national health plan? And does anyone in the GOP remember that Richard Nixon had a proposal for national health insurance that might have become law in the Seventies were it not for the opposition of Ted Kennedy and other liberal Democrats in the Congress -- a position that Kennedy came to rue?)

But give the Republicans credit for knowing how to play a good hand. Their relentless, post-enactment campaign against "Obamacare" has worked: a majority of the public dislikes and fears the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. When you're ahead on points, you pour it on.

The irony is that President Obama deliberately avoided a government takeover of health care when he decided to tackle health care reform, a challenge that makes ending the war in Afghanistan look easy by comparison, right out of the gate in 2009. Instead, he decided to work with the essential ingredients of the American health care system as he found it: private health insurance, fee-for-service medicine, employment-linked insurance, etc. The now-vilified mandate on all citizens to purchase health insurance was the big concession he made to the GOP-tilting insurance industry in exchange for the industry's acceptance of all customers, regardless of pre-existing conditions.

If Obama is defeated next November, and if he takes the Keatings, Tierneys and Tsongases of the world down with him, you'll be able to fill the mall in Washington with Democrats screaming how the Republicans jobbed them on health care. If Democrats are smart, they'll keep the crying to a minimum and bounce back quickly with a real plan for a government takeover of health care: Medicare for everyone.

They'll need something that good, that simple and that compelling to fix what's left behind when President Mitt Romney, the once-proud father of universal health care in Massachusetts, gets the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act repealed.

Retired Senator's Letter to Editor on Casinos Surely Rankled Ex-Colleagues

2011-11-18T11:35:00.000-08:00

Sue Tucker, who retired from her Merrimack Valley seat in the Massachusetts Senate at the end of the 2009-10 legislative session, was never known to mince words. She was always strong in her convictions and blunt in her language.

For example, in her brief, March, 2010, message announcing her intention not to seek re-election, Tucker thanked the voters of Andover, Dracut, Lawrence and Tewksbury for electing and re-electing her to office, reflected on her legislative priorities and accomplishments, and emphasized that, "Above all, I hate rip-offs, whether public or private, and that is the reason I am working to keep predatory gambling out of the Commonwealth."

When Tucker walked out of the State House for the last time as a senator in early-January, 2011, one of the state's most passionate and eloquent opponents of casino gambling and slot parlors left the political arena. Her heart, however, remained in the fight, as evidenced by a letter from her published in the Boston Globe on Veterans Day, Friday, Nov. 11, under the heading, "Unfortunately, it's too late to bar door from wolves of gambling industry."

The letter spanked the Globe for an editorial it published Nov. 8, raising questions about the casino bill subsequently enacted by both branches of the legislature, and blamed the newspaper for helping to create the political atmosphere that allowed the casino bill to move forward in the first place.

That Tucker would take on the region's largest, most influential newspaper was not surprising. She was always pretty fearless. That she would also give a backhand to her former colleagues while hitting the Globe was surprising. Read her entire letter to see what I mean:

"Your Nov. 8 editorial 'Flawed casino legislation leaves public interest too vulnerable' is loaded with irony. Several years ago, it was The Boston Globe that opened the door for casinos in Massachusetts. When your editorial board flirted with casinos, you gave every politician in this state permission to let the wolves in. Although I never stopped fighting the notion that we could gamble our way out of budget deficits, the day the Globe flipped on this issue was the very day I knew that casinos would eventually prevail.

"Tuesday's editorial bemoans the flaws and potential for corruption in the current casino bill. I am not privy to your editorial board's internal debate on this issue, but did you honestly think Massachusetts could do a 'clean' casino bill? It is called an oxymoron. Where in the country has a clean casino bill emerged from the legislature and remained corruption-free through the years?

"The gambling interests have a playbook to get what they want, and the name of the state is irrelevant. They see a market; they buy the political establishment; they hook the state on revenue; and then they own the legislative-regulatory framework.

"Your editorial concludes, 'If Massachusetts marries the casino industry on these terms, it will be stuck with the consequences forever.' Too bad that the Globe helped officiate at the marriage ceremony."

Tucker's main point, that the Commonwealth is about to become a business development partner of the casino industry for purposes of adding to the public treasury and will therefore be susceptible to pressure from the industry down the line, has validity. In testifying against an earlier casino/slots bill a few years back, she raised this same issue, warning that casino operators would be able to eliminate restrictions in any original enabling legislation by claiming those rules were putting them at a disadvantage with competing casinos in neighboring states. A Commonwealth that had grown dependent on casino/slots revenue would be hard-pressed to resist those claims, she suggested.

But the Tucker letter assertion that the casino industry had bought the political establishment in Massachusetts was not grounded in fact, no matter how much the industry may have spent on lobbyists. Knowing as she does that Senate President Pro Tem Stan Rosenberg of Amherst is the Senate's point man on casino legislation, that Rosenberg has studied the industry and its experiences in states across the nation for years, and that Rosenberg is a person of unquestioned integrity and dedication, it was startling to see her make that statement so blithely. Tucker worked with Rosenberg for a long time and knows him well. She had to have known her words would cut him (and other former colleagues) deeply.

Without any sign or evidence that any legislative leader actually sold his vote to anyone in the casino industry, the most anyone can fairly say is that legislators sold themselves on the concept of casinos being a revenue-producer and a jobs-creator. I'm no fan of gambling, but given the recessionary times and the word of independent experts that three casinos and one slot parlor will, when all is said and done, generate roughly $750 million a year for the state, it's not hard to see how any honest legislator could be sold on this bill.

Campaign to Kill Obamacare Is More About Politics than Health Policy

2011-11-16T15:15:00.000-08:00

I am indebted to Rogan Kersh, a Professor of Public Policy and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at New York University, for clarifying something about the well-organized and well-funded campaign to repeal the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which continues night and day under a full head of steam, two years after the bill was enacted.

You may not recognize this legislation by its proper name, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, but you surely know it by the derisive label Republicans apply to it: Obamacare.

The PPACA was the cause that Barack Obama gave the first year of his presidency to, at great political cost. Its enactment was an accomplishment of unquestionable historical and social significance, for it brought into existence a program, universal health care, that is every bit as important and far-reaching as Franklin Roosevelt's Social Security was in the Thirties and Lyndon Johnson's Medicare was in the Sixties.

Unfortunately for Obama and his fellow Democrats, universal health care has not been met with universal acceptance. Polls today indicate that more than half of the American population does not like the PPACA, and is so apprehensive about the implications of the bill that they favor repeal, despite the fact that some features of the bill, such as the one that prevents insurance companies from denying coverage to anyone because of a pre-existing illness, enjoy overwhelming public support.

Obama and the Democrats can be faulted for not selling the benefits of the PPACA better to the public. Yes, it's an incredibly large, mind-numbingly-complex program that is slowly rolling out as a result of the bill, but there are some very compelling points that could be made in speeches and in advertisements about the virtues of the PPACA. Where, for example, is the TV ad from the Democrats that has an actor playing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who cheerily informs a young cancer patient she won't be able to get coverage when his Repeal-Obamacare team wins the game?

So blame the bill itself for some of its unpopularity and much of the confusion that surrounds it. And blame the innate fears of Americans like me, who already have insurance, who like our health plans, who don't want them to change, and who worry they'll come out of this vast new social experiment with diminished, more costly insurance. But don't forget to blame the Republican Party, too, for doing everything within its power to exploit our fears and undermine Obamacare while never offering a serious alternative.

During a Rappaport Center Roundtable discussion this week at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, Professor Kersh pointed out three simple facts about the highly unusual, post-enactment battle that has erupted around the PPACA:

One, not a single Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate voted for the PPACA.

Two, the PPACA, despite its flaws and inauspicious start, has the potential one day to be as popular as Social Security and Medicare are today in the U.S.

Three, Republicans realize that great potential popularity and are deathly afraid their unanimous opposition to the bill will subject their party to a devastating, long-lasting voter backlash, 10 or 20 or more years down the line.

Imagine the PPACA withstands the multiple challenges it now faces, and imagine that voters over time come to understand and experience and depend upon the benefits of the law. If so, voters will come to appreciate the Democrats for making this great, new program possible; and Democrats will be able, as a result, to stick it to the Republicans for years ever after. ("Just remember, folks, the Republicans didn't want you and your family to have health care.")

That dynamic may go a long way to explaining why Republicans are damned and determined to kill the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in its crib.

FOES OF UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE IN MASS. ALIVE AND KICKING...

Meanwhile, things are fairly quiet in Massachusetts, which has had its own unique system of universal health coverage since 2006, a program, by the way, that has very high favorability ratings despite the fact that it has not brought down the cost of health care.

However, there is a group in Massachusetts that wants to repeal the state's mandate requiring individuals to obtain health insurance and it has reportedly collected the signatures of approximately 40,000 residents who favor putting the repeal question on next November's ballot.

For the ballot initiative to be successful, the group will have to collect nearly 30,000 additional signatures before the filing deadline of Wednesday, Nov. 30. That won't be easy in the diminishing daylight hours of our eleventh month, and if bad weather comes along, it will be especially difficult.

Where is one of those late-fall blizzards when you need one?

James E. Milano Didn't Have to Be in Office to Be THE Leader of His City

2011-11-11T12:36:00.000-08:00

Life had been good to Jim Milano, a former mayor of Melrose, Massachusetts, who died Nov. 2 at the age of 102, covered in honors, as the ancients would say. And Jim Milano had been good to life. He was a giver, not a taker.

Milano had been a lawyer for the old Boston and Maine Railroad and a long-time member of the Melrose Board of Aldermen when he was elected mayor in 1972. He went on to serve 10 consecutive, two-year terms as the city's chief executive. When he retired in 1992 at age 83, most Melrosians wished he wasn't leaving. If he wanted to, he could have won another term or two on autopilot. A few years later, they named the city's new senior citizens center in his honor, the Milano Center.

I remember once asking him, "Of all the things you've done and accomplished, what brought you the most satisfaction?" I thought he would say something about the new high school built early on his watch or the rejuvenation of Melrose's downtown, which he instigated.

"The war," he said. "Those years in the Pacific, serving with so many great men and women, that was the best thing I ever did."

Milano enlisted in the Army before Pearl Harbor and served until the end of the war, in 1945, as an artillery officer in such dangerous locales as Guadalcanal, Bougainville, the Fiji Islands and the Philippines. He was in Yokahama, Japan, on Aug. 14, 1945, when Emperor Hirohito signed the surrender documents on the deck of the nearby USS Missouri. He didn't get home once during World War II, five long, lonely and risky years. Yet 60 years later, his voice would choke as he spoke of the "privilege" of serving with his fellow Americans in the worst war ever known to mankind.

I don't think I will ever know a person of greater fundamental decency, empathy and honesty than Jim Milano. It's hard to be in the rough-and-tumble of public life for two years and not have someone suspect you of trying to deceive or mislead him, but Milano managed to be in public office for 30 years, 1962 to 1992, and never once have his integrity questioned or challenged.

"You were always honest with people," I once declared to him. In reply, he took no bow. Instead, he told of how he learned honesty from the example of his father, Joseph Milano, who had also been an alderman and had represented Melrose in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
One time, when he was a boy and his father was in the legislature, Jim Milano told me that a man stopped him on the street, gave him a carton of cigarettes and told him to give it to his father because his father had done him a favor.

"I remember thinking how nice it was of him to give my father a present and how happy my father would be when I got home with it," Milano said. "But my father wasn't happy at all. He was angry. He told me he could never take anything for doing his job, and ordered me to go to that man's home and give him back his cigarettes. It was almost supper time and I was hungry, but my father made me go right away. It was a mile walk, but of course I wouldn't say no to my father. It made a lasting impression."

After Jim Milano left office, he stayed active in the community and seldom left town. He went to Mass and Communion every day at St. Mary's Church, he faithfully attended the weekly meetings of the Melrose Rotary Club and pulled his weight in every Rotary activity and philanthropy, he tutored students at Melrose High who were struggling in reading and civics, and he socialized almost every night. A lifelong bachelor, Milano had friends of all ages and persuasions: true friends that he ate and drank and shared stories with, attended birthdays, christenings, wakes and funerals with.

You would see him around Melrose every day -- on the sidewalk outside Bread 'n Bits of Ireland, a Main Street coffee shop; waiting in line at the post office on Essex Street; or visiting a friend at the Melrose-Wakefield Hospital. And you'd see him tooling by in his big, old Chrysler, forever "Mr. Mayor" in the motorcade of life.

Only in recent years did you notice the dents that kept appearing, like shark bites, on that Chrysler and realize that age was finally catching up with him, slowing his reflexes a bit, but leaving his memory, a wonder of nature, intact. About a year ago, he had to forsake his long-time home, the interior of which was an immaculate snapshot of the Fifties, and move to Oosterman's Rest Home, less than half a mile away.

Like a bishop, Milano was waked before the altar at St. Mary's for six hours on Monday, Nov. 7. The next morning, they held a glorious requiem for him, with beautiful hymns from a full choir, ("Jesus, Remember Me, When You Come Into Your Kingdom"), an honor guard of Rotarians, and a church filled with people of many faiths and no faith at all. The burial, with full military honors, took place at Melrose's Wyoming Cemetery.

For a man who never lost an election, it was fitting that Jim Milano was brought to his rest on an election day, and that his eulogy was given by the current mayor, Rob Dolan, who idolized him while growing up.

Dolan recalled that, at the age of five or six, he went "to a political rally in late-October in the courtyard of the YMCA and holding Mayor Milano's black sign with orange letters. It was the first political sign I ever held in my life. And I liked it. It was a cold night, and others complained, but I liked it." So I guess you could say Mayor Dolan caught the political bug from Mayor Milano.
Dolan noted that, "Jim Milano was mayor from the year I was born to the year I graduated college. That is over half my life. There are tens of thousands of men and women that can say the same, living in cities across the country and across the world. If it truly takes a village to raise a child, then we were raised in Jim Milano's village. Jim Milano, together with our teachers, educated us. Jim Milano, together with our parents, taught us right from wrong. Jim Milano's character set the tone in the community, and his heart and his warmth were the foundations of our character. We are, in a very real way, Jim Milano's children. Although he had no children of his own, my generation of Melrosians are Jim Milano's children, and on behalf of them, I say thank you. We can never repay that debt."

Our country was built by givers, not takers.

Jim Milano gave and he gave and he gave, becoming ever larger in the eyes and hearts of his townsmen until he reached the status of living legend.

Mayor Dolan is right: Melrosians can never repay the debt they owe Jim Milano. But like his father, Jim Milano did not want or expect to be rewarded for doing his job.

Salem's New Court House Honors More Than a Politician's Long Hold on Office

2011-11-07T12:33:00.000-08:00

Naming public buildings and facilities after elected officials has always made me a little queasy.

Popularity is not reason enough to carve a man's name in stone on a state or municipal office building, a school or a court house. (Such honors, it seems, almost always go to men.)

Priority in naming public properties should be given, instead, to those who have done something truly significant and courageous for the public good: enlisted men and women in the military who have fought or died heroically, practitioners of the healing arts, scientists and inventors who have advanced the quality of human life, philanthropists who have given away their fortunes, and leaders of social causes who have accepted little or no compensation.

I have a friend, for example, who has dedicated his life to building and directing a non-profit organization that protects vulnerable senior citizens from exploitation by lenders and family members when they take out reverse mortgages on their homes to pay for health care and other essentials. This person has accepted low pay in a low-profile organization, and has frequently gone without a paycheck to keep it afloat. His family has suffered because of his decision to serve others rather than to maximize his income, something he could have done as the holder of two advanced degrees. A school should named after him some day, but it will never happen.

The worst example of the abuse of public naming privileges can be found in West Virginia, where there are more than 50 government buildings, roads, highways, bridges, schools, clinics, hospitals, court houses, prisons, office complexes, research and scientific centers, and other facilities named after the late U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd.

"I lost no opportunity to promote funding for programs and projects of benefit to the people back home," Byrd once said in a fit of understatement.

This man's drive for self-aggrandizement was actually unlimited. His poor, unassuming, elderly spouse had to share in the spoils, too: there are no less than nine facilities in West Virginia named after the late Erma Ora Byrd!

The "Prince of Pork," as some taxpayer groups dubbed the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, never got over his childhood insecurities.

So when I saw the other day that they are getting ready to open the $109 million J. Michael Ruane Judicial Center in the historic city of Salem, Massachusetts, I reacted first with a groan.

Combining the operations of four state courts in one big, new building, the center is named in honor of the late Mike Ruane, who served as Salem's representative in the Massachusetts House for 30 straight years and died of cancer in 2006 at age 77, two years after retiring from politics. No one else in Salem ever held that position for three decades.

I did not personally know Rep. Ruane, but I saw him in action lots of times, and can attest that he was a force of nature, an old-school politician who instinctively understood political power and how to use it. And use it he did. With intelligence, passion and relentless determination.

"I had to win. I was a hard-nosed kid, and I took things seriously," he once said.

No one ever took Mike Ruane lightly and did not regret it.

Recounting some of his accomplishments when he died, the Salem News said, "Above all, Ruane was devoted to Salem, friends say, and fought for funding for almost anything to do with the city. He lobbied for Salem State College, Riley Plaza reconstruction, Salem Willows policing, the Veterans Memorial Bridge, and local schools, housing, road projects and the courts. He is credited with securing Cat Cove for Salem State's aquaculture program and earmarking $18 million in a seaport bond bill for a new Salem pier and other waterfront projects...Ruane was stubbornly and proudly parochial. He opposed naming the Salem-Beverly bridge -- he never called it the 'Beverly-Salem bridge' -- for a Beverly veteran, and insisted it be called 'Veterans Memorial Bridge.' "

That obituary accurately described Ruane as "an emotional public speaker with a fiery temper, which sometimes got the better of him." In 1979, it said, Ruane "got into a dispute with Marblehead officials over closing the Forest River tidal gates to allow summer swimming in a Salem neighborhood. It ended in a free-for-all at a State House hearing. Ruane's ear got bloodied and, when he tried to retaliate, he mistakenly punched his chief of staff, Sharon Armstrong, in the shoulder. After he apologized profusely, they laughed about it."

Ruane always brought the state bacon home to his town, he was a dervish of constituent services, and he never coasted. He never concealed a lack of action behind a regular barrage of press releases, as some have been known to do at the Massachusetts State House. Ruane, in fact, rarely issued a press release.

But those acts and attributes alone would not justify putting his name on that new judicial center, in my opinion. What could justify it, I have come to conclude, were three things:

One, Ruane's total satisfaction in, and total dedication to, his role as a representative of the people of Salem in the Massachusetts House;

Two, Ruane's refusal to exploit the political fundraising potential that came his way when he became vice chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, (the committee that reporters are obligated to put the word "powerful" before every time they type it); and

Three, Ruane's rather unique place in the history and culture of his community. (Will there ever be another one like him who so thoroughly embodies the characteristics and aspirations of the citizens of Salem and who plays such a prominent role in its politics for such a long period?)

By giving his heart and soul to the job he had for each of the 30 years he had it, and by never scheming to attain a higher, more powerful position, Ruane honored the ideal of public service for its own sake. By declining to build an intimidating campaign treasury when he could have done so with minimal effort, Ruane displayed a sense of restraint and humility that all office holders should emulate. And by immersing himself in the life of the community for so long and by leading countless political battles for his fellow citizens, he came to personify his era in Salem.

Those are reasons enough to look at the J. Michael Ruane Judicial Center without groaning.

An Apparent Strong Point: Olver Didn't Come from a Typical Political Mold

2011-11-01T14:06:00.000-07:00

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to be an effective member of the United States House of Representatives, but it might not hurt to be a chemist, if the example of John W. Olver can be taken to heart.

Before entering politics in his early-thirties, Olver earned his bachelor's degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, his master's at Tufts and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Harvard grads serve gratefully as janitors. He was teaching in college when he ran successfully for a Pioneer Valley seat in the Massachusetts House in 1968.

In 1973, Olver moved up to the Massachusetts Senate, and, in the spring of 1991, he won a special election to complete the term of the late Republican Congressman Silvio O. Conte.

I haven't checked the record, but I think it's safe to say that Olver, who will be retiring when his current term expires in January, 2013, is the only Chemistry Ph.D. in the Congress. Men and women with that skill set don't often go into politics, and, if they do, they don't make it their life's work, as Olver has.

He's a very interesting man: cerebral and rather shy in a field filled with extroverts who have scaled the heights mainly on gut instinct. He's quiet in a town, Washington, D.C., where brashness rules, yet he's had more than an average share of "ruling," much more.

It has been said to the point of cliche that, in our nation's capital, there are show horses and there are workhorses. Without question, Olver's a workhorse. He's always gotten the job done, always delivered the goods to his district, by virtue of his smart, steady, unremitting toil.

Until Republicans captured the House in the 2010 elections, Olver was chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation of the House Appropriations Committee, meaning he carried enormous weight for years on every federal dollar spent on highway, airport and rail projects. He remains the highest-ranking Democrat on the subcommittee and still has considerable influence in those areas.

Olver is a policy guy to his bones. He lives and breathes the big thoughts. As stated in his press packet, Olver's "top policy priorities include providing new transportation options and maintaining our transportation infrastructure, keeping affordable and energy-efficient housing available, protecting the environment, increasing worker rights and benefits, expanding access to affordable health care and improving education and job training."

Throughout his time in office, and stretching back to his days in the Massachusetts House and Senate, Olver has neatly balanced his policy concerns with the quotidian items that matter most to his constituents, many of whom hail from the small towns and hidden hamlets of the Berkshires.

To give you an idea of how closely Olver has identified himself with the average folks in his district, listen to how they're reacting "out west" to the news that he's retiring and that much of his old territory will be absorbed, as a result, into another Congressman's district due to the mandated shrinking and realignment of Massachusetts seats -- Jim McGovern's (Worcester), perhaps, or Richie Neal's (Springfield).

"It (realignment) would squash the voices of all of the smaller cities along the 1st Massachusetts's corridor," Pittsfield Mayor James M. Ruberto told The Berkshire Eagle last week. "Good God, Worcester? What connection does Pittsfield, Massachusetts, have to Worcester?"

The Eagle also quoted North Adams Mayor Richard J. Alcombright as saying, "I don't want to use the word devastating, but it (realignment) just doesn't feel good. Throwing us in with a district that large and a constituency so tightly populated as in those metropolitan areas, personally, I think it's kind of scary what could end up happening to the representation of Berkshire County."

State Senator Benjamin B. Downing of Pittsfield had the final word in that article. "...the priorities of small towns and cities have been the priorities of John Olver for the past 20 years in Congress, and we're the better for it," he said.

It's a fortunate man that can end his career at age 75 and have the people who know him best truly wish he wasn't leaving and worry seriously about what will happen when he's gone.

With Happy Hour Amendment, Senator Hedlund Played His Cards Well

2011-10-28T14:28:00.001-07:00

If there were a "Champion of an Uncomfortable Truth" award in Massachusetts politics, State Senator Bob Hedlund would win it this year.

A Republican from Weymouth, Hedlund wants to amend the casino bill to make it legal for bars and restaurants in Massachusetts to offer patrons free or discounted drinks if casinos are allowed to do the same.

When he proposed it earlier this month during Senate debate on the bill, it looked like kind of a strange move for someone of Hedlund's philosophical bent. He was a lead sponsor in 2005, after all, of "Melanie's Law," which significantly increased the penalties for drunk driving.

And just this week, Hedlund was a featured speaker at a State House event in support of a bill that would require anyone convicted of drunk driving, even first offenders, to have a lock on his car's ignition preventing the vehicle from starting if alcohol were detected on the driver's breath.

Some skeptics immediately speculated that Hedlund was pushing a "Happy Hour Amendment" because he co-owns a Braintree restaurant called Four Square and wants to attract more elbow-benders to his business.

Not at all, Hedlund calmly responded, Four Square has no desire or plan to offer happy hours, which were banned in Massachusetts in 1984 following a series of ghastly drunk driving-related fatalities, and would not do so if they were re-legalized.

His only motive for bringing the issue forward, he explained, was to level the field on which casinos will be newly competing with restaurants and bars for the limited recreational and entertainment dollars of Massachusetts residents. If casinos will be able to feed free drinks to gamblers, as they clearly want to do, restaurants and bars should be able to do the same, he reasoned.

In a legislature where members have an unwritten policy of referring to casino legislation as the "gaming bill" -- never the gambling bill -- most folks were not happy to be discussing how gaming establishments will be loosening up their customers with free booze, even though it's been that way so long at casinos that people seldom comment on the practice.

Hedlund opposes the casino bill, so I think it's fair to surmise he's trying to turn the tradition of free casino drinks, judo style, into a weapon against the bill. For that, I give him a warm round of applause. Because not only is Hedlund smart on the politics, he's also right on the principle:

The Commonwealth should not make it easy for casinos to get their customers stupid any more than it should make it easy for someone to get loaded at a bar before driving home. Unless, of course, casinos want to provide free rides home to every gambler.

Romney Must Fall Asleep Wondering, Why Can't I Shake Herman Cain?

2011-10-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

If you understand why the race for the Republican nomination for President of the United States is going the way it is, please clue me in.

How did we get to where we are today, with the former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, he who holds two advanced degrees from Harvard, running neck-and-neck in the opinion polls with Herman Cain, a motivational speaker who's never held public office?

Is Romney such a weak candidate or Cain such a strong one?

If we could make a transcript of Romney's thought bubbles, they might sound something like Jon Lovitz, playing Mike Dukakis in that old Saturday Night Live skit, as he pauses in debate with Dana Carvey's loquacious-but-incomprehensible George H.W. Bush to marvel to himself:

"I can't believe I'm losing to this guy."

The New York Times published a great article on Cain this past Sunday, ("Cain, Now Running as Outsider, Came to Washington as Lobbyist," 10/23/11), exploring his success as chief executive of the National Restaurant Association (1996-99).

The former CEO of the Godfather's Pizza chain, Cain basically took "a once-sleepy trade group" and turned it into a "lobbying powerhouse," the Times said.

Give Cain credit. He had a plan to take Washington by storm as the tribune of the restaurant industry and executed it to a fare-thee-well. And all the while he was plotting an even bigger move, into politics.

As Boston's Tom Kershaw, who owns the bar on which the TV sitcom Cheers was based, said to the New York Times, "I think what was enticing to him (Cain) was coming to Washington and getting into the middle of the whole political arena. I think he had his eye on politics."

Though he was contemplating in the late-1990s a run for high office, the ultra-confident Cain did not hesitate to take positions that might later put him in an uncomfortable position with the public and the media. He allied the National Restaurant Association, for example, with the alcohol and tobacco industries in opposing tighter blood-alcohol limits on drivers and higher taxes on cigarettes.

"The restaurant industry literally became the alter ego of the tobacco industry during that period of time," Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, told the Times.

If Cain wins the nomination, there will be ironies aplenty to plague the mind of Mitt, who bucked members of his own party back in 2004 and signed into law a bill banning smoking in the workplace. Some Republicans argued that the bill was an infringement on personal freedoms and would devastate the restaurant industry in Massachusetts, but Romney signed it because he believed in protecting the health of those who have to earn their livings in restaurants and bars. Breathing second-hand smoke should not be a job requirement for anyone, he declared.

Hard to believe, but I guess Cain could actually get the nomination in this strange political season, a time of wild gyrations in the nation's troubled soul.

"Bearing is fate," the Romans said, and Herman Cain has the bearing of a leader. His oratorical skills make the rest of the field look like rookies at Toastmasters. His confidence and conviction are dazzling.

If the Republicans do nominate Cain, I hope they'll double-down on the bet by choosing Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi, as the nominee for vice president, thus producing the first all-ex-lobbyist national ticket.

As Jon Lovitz might then say, "Herman Cain, Haley Barbour. Yeah, that's the ticket!"

The Harshbarger Way of Influencing the Casino Debate Doesn't Add Up

2011-10-14T13:14:00.000-07:00

In the prime of his life, Scott Harshbarger was one of the most powerful men in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a popular state-wide office holder regarded by many as a likely future governor.

Today, approaching his 70th birthday, he is a lawyer in private practice and a voice crying in the wilderness against casino gambling.

Harshbarger has said that our elected officials are "careening toward a cliff" as they push the casino bill toward enactment on Beacon Hill.

He has said it is "shameful" that "Beacon Hill clearly hasn't learned the lessons of its recent past and insists on moving forward with a bill that will only help casino owners, lobbyists and special interests."

He has said the casino bill "was worked out in secret by no more than three State House leaders and has been proven by the media to be a larded-up, special interest giveaway co-authored by the casino industry to help feather its nests at the expense of hard-working Bay State residents."

And he has harshly criticized the owners of Suffolk Downs, who are itching to compete for one of the new casino licenses, for making contributions to charities associated with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and East Boston State Senator Anthony Petrucelli, calling those donations "yet another instance of the looming shadows stretching into our political, social and now even non-profit culture by the greedy insiders and shady players that dominate the casino industry."

For someone who seriously wants the legislature and governor to reject casinos, Harshbarger's decision to attack publicly the speaker of the house, the president of the senate, and the governor doesn't add up.

Harshbarger is not stupid. He knows those words are like poison to the folks on Beacon Hill, those both in the leadership and in the rank and file. He also knows that the mayor of Boston will never forgive him for throwing him under the bus like that.

(One can safely assume that Harshbarger has no legal business with the city of Boston, nor does he hope to have a client who one day will need to bring a matter before the Menino administration.)

Harshbarger must also know that the people who do not hold public office and who have the most credibility and the most sway on Beacon Hill would never strafe the decision-makers in public before, or even after, a big vote.

One cannot imagine, for example, Michael Widmer of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, accusing the senate president of engaging in "name-calling" rather than "embracing an honest debate on the complex issue of casino gambling," as Harshbarger has done.

So why is Harshbarger waging the battle in such a patently self-defeating manner?

Either he sincerely believes his rhetoric is the best way to rouse the public against casinos, or he just doesn't give a damn. Maybe he's earned enough that he can say whatever he wants whenever he wants, and anyone who doesn't like it can go to hell.

Or maybe he's still hurting over the heartbreakingly close election for governor he lost to Paul Celucci in 1998, an election many believe he would have won, if only the members of the Democratic establishment at the time had genuinely embraced his candidacy and pulled out all the stops to get him a victory.

Way down deep, could he be thinking, the big shots on Beacon Hill never considered me one of their own, and you know what, they were right, so I'd rather lose than ever have to pretend I have regard for any of them?

Prediction: It Will Be a Long Time Before Inspector General Sits for Another Q & A

2011-10-11T12:28:00.000-07:00

I clicked on the CommonWealth magazine interview with the Inspector General of the Commwealth of Massachusetts, Greg Sullivan, last week just to check out what he was saying. I didn't expect to find anything especially interesting, nor did I think I would be startled.

Boy was I wrong.

The interviewer, Colman Herman, opened the discussion with Sullivan by asking if anything had changed in state government since 1980, when the Ward Commission "reported that corruption was a way of life in Massachusetts, that political influence, not professional performance, was the prime criterion in doing business with the state, and that shoddy work and debased standards were the norm."

Sullivan, who served as Norwood's representative in the legislature in the Eighties and Nineties, and has been Inspector General since 2002, answered, "I think they have changed for the better overall. There are safeguards that have been put in place that I think have ameliorated to a great extent the problems that existed at the time of the Ward Commission. The Legislature set up ways to try to catch the crooks. We now have a very robust competitive procurement system for contracts."

"But," Colman persisted, "it's the rare week when you can't pick up a newspaper and read about yet another corrupt politician."

"It's a never-ending battle," conceded Sullivan, "because there is a subculture of corruption on Beacon Hill made up of people who always find opportunities to exploit the system to their advantage, but to the detriment of the public. It's a never-ending battle against the tide of people inside and outside of government who seek to use undue influence to affect government and to capitalize on loopholes. Influence peddling is probably as bad today as it ever was. It is unabated. And there's always a new loophole, a new trick, an artifice someone finds to get around existing law. We are engaged in a constant effort to close new loopholes. People have been able to find more wily, creative ways to do things that are difficult to catch. And it's not just in the Legislature, we see it all over government."

Wow, I thought, this is huge!

The Inspector General, who has legal responsibilities to detect and prevent "fraud, waste and abuse in the expenditure of public funds" (and a $2.8 million budget to fulfill that mission), is now on the record as endorsing the jaded view that a "subculture of corruption" exists on Beacon Hill.

Big headlines in the newspapers and dramatic pronouncements from TV anchors can't be far behind, I figured. This is the Inspector General speaking, not some barking dog in the blogosphere.

Reading on, I was startled again when, in response to a question on the legal problems encountered by three consecutive former Speakers of the Massachusetts House, Sullivan said, in part, "...They (Speakers) have a strong desire for money and they have opportunity. In the case of Speaker DiMasi, you have an example of an abuse of power that was tolerated by the membership for years. I was in the House for seventeen years, and one thing I observed was that there was an inordinate deference given by the membership to the speaker to a phenomenal degree..."

I thought: That's the kind of stuff that will shake the foundation at the State House. Sullivan must know what he is saying, he must have stuff to back this up, he must be getting ready to issue a report with some new, blockbuster findings.

CommonWealth posted the Sullivan interview online Tuesday, Oct. 4. Since then, the piece has not generated any big headlines, or caused any fall-out whatsoever, that I am aware of.

Checking for new developments today, Oct. 12, I returned to the magazine's web site and was surprised again -- this time by a comment on the interview that the Inspector General had posted on Friday, Oct. 7. It was the first comment that a reader had bothered to post. This is what the Inspector General wrote:

"I want to elaborate on my answer to the fourth question above. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has found that there was no financial gain or motive underlying (former-Speaker Thomas Finneran's) conduct. This differentiates Speaker Finneran's offense in a significant way from that of former-Speaker DiMasi with respect to motive. My response to this question was intended to address former-Speaker DiMasi's offenses, which my office helped to uncover and prosecute. Secondly, I did not mean to imply that Beacon Hill has an overarching 'culture of corruption,' because I am convinced that the opposite is true. An overwhelming majority of government leaders act with honesty and try to prevent corrupt activities from taking place. Unfortunately, as I pointed out in Coleman Herman's Q&A article, I believe that a small subculture of corruption has existed and continues to exist, as evidenced by continuing examples of criminal convictions."

All of us, I imagine, have had our Roseanne Roseannadanna moments, when, caught on a rickety verbal scaffolding of our own making, we have to climb down while muttering the word, "Nevermind." The Inspector General has just had his, to the great relief of the Massachusetts Legislature.

To read the interview with Sullivan, go to http://www.commonwealthmagazine.org/ and click on article headlined, "IG sees subculture of corruption. Sullivan calls special education a 'money pit' "

Senator's Position Prompts Tough Question: Are You a Snob If You Oppose Casinos?

2011-10-05T14:22:00.000-07:00

In announcing his opposition last week to the hottest piece of legislation on Beacon Hill, the bill that would license three casinos and one parlor for slot machines, Dan Wolf presented an interesting scenario to all the parents and grandparents of Massachusetts.

"One day the phone will ring, and it will be one of our children, or grandchildren, calling with the great news -- they've found a job and will be starting work in a few days," the rookie state senator from Cape Cod and the Islands wrote in an op-ed piece published in one of his local newspapers. "We'll share their excitement and wonder what, of all possible things, they'll be doing. Providing health care? Building a school? Planting quahogs? Teaching kindergarten? Driving a bus? Writing computer software? Installing solar panels?

"Of course we'll be encouraging no matter what, but if the answer comes back that they'll be working in a casino, who among us would be quite as proud? And who will celebrate that legacy, which now belongs to us?"

In that same piece, Wolf noted, "Our economy has always been about education, innovation, health care, financial services and creative entrepreneurs. Our tourism industry has always attracted visitors from around the world because of our environment, culture and history."

With those who argue that casinos and slots are the "best way, only way, or right way for Massachusetts to create work -- or that those who oppose casinos somehow don't understand that we need jobs and need them now," Wolf said he "respectfully disagrees."

"...no doubt some jobs will be created -- solid, short-term construction jobs at the outset, then generally low-wage, longer-term jobs staffing casinos and related resorts," allowed Wolf, who co-founded Cape Air, perhaps the most successful regional airline in the U.S., and has been a leading voice of the business community on Cape Cod for more than two decades.

I'm inclined to agree with Wolf, but there are many folks following the casino debate today who say the case he espouses -- that we can and should be stimulating our economy in better ways, that we should be creating a higher-class of jobs -- borders on snobbery.

When I tried the Wolf argument on a co-worker, Walter, the other day, while shamelessly presenting it as my own, he responded as if I had suddenly addressed him in a voice like Prince Charles's.

"You're being a snob!" he said. "Who are you to tell someone the job he's doing is beneath him? Who are you to dismiss a job, any job, as low-class when you have a nice job for yourself?"

He's right in a way. If today you don't have a job, if you and your family are suffering the consequences of joblessness, and tomorrow someone offers you a job in a casino, tomorrow is going to be one of the best days of your life. If your family is cooking pancakes for supper and a constable is going to boot you from your foreclosed home tomorrow, a discussion on the finer points of job creation in the "innovation economy" could not be more beside the point.

Even though I wear a monocle, I don't think Walter really believes I'm a snob. He just wanted to put me on the defensive and put himself on a high-ground position. (He can't help it, he's a lawyer.) It's all about positioning these days, positioning and timing...and timing is certainly working in favor of the gambling conglomerates eager to enter the virgin Massachusetts market.

Back in the 1990s, when the economy was booming here and across the nation, it's hard to imagine casinos and slots getting the attention on Beacon Hill they've been getting the past two or three years. As Governor Deval Patrick and legislative leaders have observed, casino legislation tends "to suck all the oxygen out of the room," making other issues seem less important and consuming huge blocks of the legislative calendar.

There's a lot at stake in the upcoming competition for casino licenses. Reportedly, the gambling industry has sized up Massachusetts as another Pennsylvania, where casinos became a $2 billion per year industry within a few years of legalization. Estimates of the number of permanent jobs that would be created by three casinos and one slot parlor in Massachusetts range as high as 20,000 and as low as 7,000.

Someday we may look back and wonder why we didn't spend as much time in 2010-11 considering novel ways to promote our economy in the areas where it has been traditionally strong, like the ones identified by Senator Wolf, as we did on enabling a new form of legalized gambling.

Or maybe the sound of all those slot machines and of those Las Vegas-style shows at our resort casinos will forever drown out those who are saying we can stimulate our economy in other ways -- voices like that of University of Massachusetts President Robert L. Caret.

Commenting on a recent UMass analysis of increasing income and wealth disparities in the Bay State, Caret said, "Increasing education attainment and spreading the opportunity to benefit from the Bay State's global leadership in the innovation economy to our working families and communities outside Greater Boston will be critical to reversing these trends (toward greater disparities). The future economic and social health of the Commonwealth is dependent on that outcome."

If that's a snobbish message, I'll eat my monocle.

Surprises Imaginary and Real Point to Continuing Hard Times for Many in Massachusetts

2011-10-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, rounding the corner from Washington Street onto Milk Street in downtown Boston, I was surprised by a sign for a new business above a storefront at 25 Milk.

MILK STREET PAWN BROKERS, it said. FAST CASH!

Times are tough, I thought, but you know they're really tough when someone starts a pawn shop in the Financial District. Flashing across my mind was the image of a down-on-his-luck stockbroker darting through the door to hock his gold cuff links.

To my relief, I soon learned that MILK STREET PAWNBROKERS was part of the temporary, on-street set for the new Jeff Bridges-Ryan Reynolds movie they're shooting in Boston, "RIPD." The title stands for "Rest In Peace Department" and the film concerns the exploits of a police force composed of ghosts who battle evil spirits who have refused to leave this world, an absurd but fun concept. (Never underestimate a movie starring Jeff Bridges, who in the remake of "True Grit" just made us forget John Wayne.)

Making movies in Massachusetts is generally good for our economy, but I don't know how much it will help a situation highlighted in a recent report from the Donahue Institute at the University of Massachusetts, named for the late Maurice A. Donahue of Holyoke, who served as Massachusetts Senate President from 1964 to 1971.

A little over a month ago, two UMASS professors, Michael Goodman and Robert Nakosteen, published a report in the Institute's MassBenchmarks journal indicating that "economic inequality across the state has worsened notably in recent years."

Rising income inequality across Massachusetts "reflects a divergence of the destinies of many Bay State families, communities and regions," they wrote. "While this pattern is by no means new, it is clear that recent events have served to exacerbate the inequality that has become a disturbing fact of life in the contemporary Massachusetts economy."

Professors Goodman and Nakosteen found that income inequality has been increasing the most in Greater Boston, where "the medium family income in the top fifth of families was ten times that of their counterparts in the bottom fifth" by 2008. From 1999 to 2008, families in the top 20%, income-wise, saw their median annual income go from $150,295 to $232,879, an increase of 55%. The full Goodman-Nakosteen report may be found at http://www.massbenchmarks.org/

If you're looking for other statistics on the plight of middle- and lower-income earners, they're not hard to find these days. The September issue of Health Affairs magazine, for example, reported that rising health care costs are exacting "a heavy financial toll" on many families, leaving them with less and less disposable income. From 1999 to 2009, the income of an average American family of four jumped from $76,000 to $99,000, according to authors David Auerbach and Arthur Kellerman; however, those families had to spend almost all of those added take-home dollars on health care and related expenses because inflation in health care consistently exceeded the general inflation rate by significant percentages.

Then there was the New York Times report yesterday, (Companies to Pass On More Of Health Costs to Workers, 10/3/11), which said, "Companies next year will push more health care costs onto their workers, who may see an increase of nearly 11 percent in what they have deducted from their paychecks for health insurance, according to an annual study by Aon Hewitt, a large Chicago benefits consulting firm."

The article went on to say, "As companies struggle to control costs in a tough economy, the 2012 annual employee premiums are expected to jump an average 10.6 percent, to more than $2,300. That figure has nearly doubled since 2005, when workers at larger companies paid on average $1,192 annually per employee and paid about 17 percent of the company's costs, according to Aon Hewitt data...The employee share projected for next year is a contribution of 22 percent of the $10,475 employer cost of the health plan."

Continuing my perambulations last Friday, I had another surprise, this one prompted by an all-too-real event on the Rose Kennedy Greenway near South Station: the beginning of an "Occupy Boston" action that is part of a movement by people in large cities across the nation protesting economic imbalances and the lack of opportunities for younger members of the workforce.

The local protest started with nearly 1,000 people but had dwindled to about 100 hearty souls on Monday, folks who had been camping out in tents all weekend.

"We're bringing our message to the 99 percent of Americans that feel that their ability to provide for themselves has been eroded and that their representation in government has been undermined," said Nadeem Mazen of Cambridge, a spokesman for the group, as quoted in the Boston Globe.

Who would have predicted there would be a tent city in Boston this fall populated by victims of the Great Recession? It likely hints at surprises-to-come in the elections of 2012.

Bold Move on Medicare Eligibility Maybe Deserved Another on Executive Pay

2011-09-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

The Chicago-based American Hospital Association (AHA) never asked for my advice before advocating that Americans should have to wait an extra two years before becoming eligible for Medicare.

I know, the AHA is a big organization with lots of issues on its plate, lots of constituencies to massage. They don't have time to consult even a handful of the former hospital public relations executives floating around this country, of which I happen to be one. I must face facts: health-care-legends-in-their-own-minds like me are a dime a dozen.

But if the folks in the hospital association had for some strange reason contacted me before loosing this proposal on the public yesterday, I would have had the perspicacity to advise extreme caution when packaging this.

I also would have advised them to have something compelling to offer against the predictable reaction that hospital executives were trying to preserve their own bottom lines at the expense of their elderly patients, a line of attack that cropped up in the first paragraph of an article in today's Boston Globe:

"As the deficit reduction supercommittee hunts for $1.5 trillion in additional savings, U.S. hospital executives are so worried about having their payments cut that they plan to start lobbying Congress next week to shift the burden onto their elderly patients -- specifically by raising the age of eligibility for Medicare."

Lynn Nicholas, president of the Massachusetts Hospital Association, was quoted as saying, "We have to look at health care entitlements and not just payments. It's pretty much a no brainer to raise the age of eligibility for future enrollees."

The AHA is not wrong on the big picture. Our country is broke and living on credit; something has to give if we are going to have a country in 10 or 20 years that resembles America as we know it. Pegging Medicare eligibility at 67 would save the federal government nearly $125 billion over a 10-year period -- serious dough, in other words.

We hear every day that it will require "shared sacrifice" by all citizens and all sectors of our economy to get through this crisis, a cry that has become a cliche; but, like all cliches, it is true as death.

Many of America's hospitals are hurting financially, and many have had to make considerable sacrifices to get through these difficult times. "Providers have been giving and giving and giving, and will give more," Ms. Nicholas emphasized to the Globe.

I do not doubt the sincerity behind that position. Nevertheless, it is a position with some weaknesses. Hospital executives could strengthen it substantially with a bold gesture or two.

The upper crust of hospital management in the U.S. is very well compensated. Even though most hospitals are non-profits, and even though the President of the United States makes $400,000 per year as the head of the largest non-profit organization in the world, (the U.S. government), most hospital CEOs make more than that. And some make a great deal more -- in the neighborhood of $1 million or $2 million more!

If the AHA had somehow persuaded its members to support a $15,000 reduction in the pay of every non-profit hospital executive making between $250,000 and $500,000, a $25,000 reduction in the pay of every executive making between $500,000 and $750,000, and so on, and if the AHA had tied those reductions to a two-year increase in the Medicare eligibility age, the hospitals would be in a stronger position today. Whenever they talked subsequently about shared sacrifice, they would have greater authority.

And it would be easier for them to deflect missiles from antagonists like Rob Restuccia, who headed Health Care for All in Massachusetts for many years and is now the director of Community Catalyst, an organization pushing for universal health care across the nation.

Today in the Globe, Restuccia pronounced the AHA's idea on Medicare eligibility a "public relations disaster," adding, "These are mostly nonprofit institutions. They're supposed to be focused on caring for their community. This would not help their community, though it may help their bottom line."

Ouch!

Government Generates Endless Stream of Press Releases. Bring It On, I Say.

2011-09-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

Habits are hard to break and I have long been in the habit of reading every press release I come across from a state agency or an elected official.

A habit like this is, choose one: (a) a sign of mental illness, (b) a harmless waste of time, (c) a geek's fantasy come true, or (d) typical behavior of a conscientious employee?

When I invited all my friends to take this quiz, one said (a) and the other said (c).

I'm not crazy. I know there's little value in perusing press releases like "Kerry to Hold Field Hearing on Massachusetts Fishing Industry," or "Assistant Deputy Education Secretary Shelton to Discuss Competitive Workforce Strategies at Breakfast Event with Business Leaders," or "Public Market Commission Public Meeting in Boston Monday."

My view is, you have to be willing to endure government-inflicted boredom on a vast scale in order to discover the occasional story that makes you sit up and take notice, the piece that maybe makes you exclaim, "Now, that is my idea of our tax dollars at work!"

Take, for example, the 9/22/11 announcement from Attorney General Martha Coakley's office, the one that was headlined: "Former Manager of Milford Water Company Indicted for Allegedly Tampering with Samples of Contaminated Water."

Reading it, I learned that Henry Papuga, who once managed the private company in charge of the town's water system, had been indicted by a Worcester County grand jury on six counts of tampering with an environmental monitoring device or method and two counts of making false statements.

According to the AG's office, Papuga allegedly tampered with drinking water samples in August of 2009 by adding chlorine to them in the hope of ending an order requiring all citizens to boil water before using it. The order was in place because samples had tested positive for E. coli bacteria, which can cause illnesses that cause serious discomfort and pain, and occasionally even death.

"...the defendant was entrusted with the safety and wellbeing of the people in the community," Coakley was quoted as saying. "We allege the defendant tampered with water samples which potentially put the health of thousands at risk."

Also quoted was Commissioner Kenneth Kimmell of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, who said, "Public water systems are expected to accurately collect samples for testing. These samples are essential to the work MassDEP does to ensure water quality and the public's confidence in its drinking water. Tampering with samples is a serious attack on the integrity of this system. This case shows how seriously we will respond to tampering."

The charges against Mr. Papuga stem from an investigation by the Massachusetts Environmental Strike Force, an interagency unit composed of prosecutors from the AG's office and investigators and engineers from the MassDEP. The unit prosecutes crimes that harm or threaten the state's water, air or land and that pose a significant threat to human health.

For the record, Mr. Papuga intends to plead innocent when arraigned in court. His attorney, William Kettlewell, told the Milford Daily News, "We intend to fight these unfounded charges and expect that Mr. Papuga will be fully exonerated when all the facts are brought forth."

I can't remember the last time I saw something in the news about the Massachusetts Environmental Strike Force, so it was good to be reminded there is one. I was also grateful to the AG for putting my fears into a newer perspective. Otherwise I might start to enjoy life too much.

In this age of terror, we rightly worry about terrorists poisoning our water supplies, yet seldom if ever do we ponder the risks posed by slipshod and negligent management of our infrastructure.

Personal Dynamics More Than Party Policies May Explain Republican Rep Win

2011-09-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

A Republican won the special election Tuesday to fill the 12th Bristol District seat in the House of Representatives, which Steve Canessa had resigned from in June.

The new rep is Keiko Orrall of Lakeville, a 44-year-old secretary and former teacher who home schools her two children. When sworn in, Orrall will become the 33rd Republican in the 160-member House.

Since the recent bribery conviction of former Democratic House Speaker Sal DiMasi, top Republicans in the state have cranked up the volume on their "culture of corruption on Beacon Hill" talk, so one has to wonder if Orrall's victory indicates voters are turning against the Democratic Party.

The Republicans of course believe they are. MassGOP Chair Jennifer Nassour released a statement Tuesday declaring that voters had "sent a message to Beacon Hill" by electing Orrall. Her campaign, Nassour said, had presented a "clear choice" to the voters: "more of the same, or progress and fresh ideas."

Two other aspects of this election made Republican hearts beat faster: one, the 12th Bristol, which includes parts of New Bedford, Freetown, Lakeville and Middleboro, had been represented by one Democrat or another for more than 30 consecutive years; two, the Democrat defeated by Orrall, Roger Brunelle, Jr., is a union painter and labor activist.

Democrats, meanwhile, are taking comfort in the fact this was a special election, with a special election's typically low turnout: voter turnout across the four communities averaged 20%, and in heavily Democratic New Bedford, it was just over 11%.

Also, Democrats are comfortable in the knowledge that their veto-proof majority in the House remains impregnable. The growth of the Republican team from 32 to 33 members puts a tiny dent in Democratic pride but does not make the minority party any more effective in the House.

We'll have to wait until the fall of 2012 to see if Orrall's victory was a harbinger of a resurgent GOP or an anomaly. If you favor the anomaly hypothesis, you'll probably dwell on the background dynamics, and you may come to favor the explanation that this election was more about acceptance and rejection on the personal level than the principles espoused by either party.

Keep in mind that Steve Canessa was a very popular man in his district. At 31, the former football star at Apponequet Regional High School and member of the Lakeville School Committee had a bright political future before him. He could be seen as a prototype of the wholesome, diligent and engaging young men that voters traditionally look kindly upon in legislative elections. Voters like to send the Canessas of the world to the State House because they embody the community's best feelings about itself. They put them in office partly as a way of proclaiming, This is the kind of young person we produce around here!

Folks in the 12th Bristol, I suspect, were disappointed and angry when Canessa walked away from the job he had just been re-elected to in November, 2010, to become public affairs director at Southcoast Health Systems. Many of them felt burned when he parlayed the position they'd bestowed upon him into a better-paying job in the private sector, where he can capitalize on the government experience he had gained courtesy of the electorate.

Canessa rejected in June the voters who had accepted him in November; to punish Canessa, voters rejected the Democrat who had replaced him on the ballot.

That's my itty-bitty theory, anyway.

Tolman Will Be in Good Shape at the AFL-CIO. He Knows How to Listen and How to Laugh.

2011-09-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

As I was saying, Steve Tolman is a likeable guy.

Of course, most politicians are. Voters do not generally vote for candidates they dislike.

What in particular is it, you might ask, that makes the state senator from the 2nd Suffolk and Middlesex District likeable?

If I had to put my finger on it, I'd say a sense of humor.

The absurdities of this world and of the politician's life seem to tickle Tolman more than the average man or woman walking about the State House. He always has kind of a glint in his eye.

As he has demonstrated in his advocacy for the mentally ill and the drug-addicted and the homeless, Steve Tolman can take the issues very seriously. But he never takes himself seriously, an attitude that puts the people he meets at ease and primes the pump of conversation.

Also, he doesn't stand on formality. You don't have to call him "Senator" or "Mr. Leader," a salutation he merits as Assistant Majority Leader, the fourth highest position in the Senate.

If you know him and you have met with him before on some issue, Tolman makes it easy for you to cut through the baloney. He practically insists you get to the point fast. Before your backside has settled into the chair, you might hear him say, "OK, what do you want now?"

That doesn't mean he's going to do what you want, only that he wants to get the business out of the way as quickly as possible and talk about something interesting, like sports or politics.

Tolman's parents had eight kids and he came along towards the end. There are five older and two younger than he.

Now, the younger kids in a big family tend to be less serious than the older ones, and more likely to speak out of turn, mug for the camera, or say something outrageous. Their brashness can be endearing and funny.

When he becomes the new President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, as he is slated to do next month, Tolman will be more likely to use his interpersonal skills -- his charm and light touch --than his thinking skills to begin advancing labor's agenda. This is not to say that he lacks smarts. He's plenty smart and plenty shrewd.

Tolman doesn't feel the need to impress you with his brains though. My guess is he'd prefer that his adversaries believe he's not as intelligent as he is, and that he'd take steps to encourage them in that illusion, the better to pull the wool over their eyes.

As a guy who fought his way up from the bottom -- from Ward 2 Democratic committee member in Watertown to the Massachusetts House of Representatives to the Massachusetts Senate, and from railroad clerk to the threshold of ultimate labor power in this state -- Tolman will likely emphasize the part of his presidency that plays out on the sidewalks and in the union halls, as opposed to the TV studios and corporate board rooms. He'll be more of a prominent presence on the picket lines than a booming voice in the banquet halls.

The big questions about President Tolman are unanswerable at this point:

Can he make organized labor more relevant in our 21st Century Massachusetts economy, based as it is on high tech, biotech, higher education and research, and health care? Can he expand substantially the number of union members in Massachusetts? Can he get more done on Beacon Hill than his predecessor?

This would be a tall order for anyone. I wish him the best, and hope the breaks go his way.

Speaking of breaks, Tolman is always willing to give one to a person down on his luck. For example:

A few years back, I was waiting to meet someone in the little park beside the State House, on the Bowdoin Street side of the building, when I saw one of the city's most notorious panhandlers approach him at the corner of Bowdoin and Ashburton Place. This man was well known to people who travelled regularly on foot around Beacon Hill, in the Common, or through Downtown Crossing. He had a loud, raspy voice that could be heard half a block away, and he liked to stand in the middle of the sidewalk, all noisy and dirty, arms outstretched, clothes smelly, getting in everyone's face as he pleaded endlessly, "Does anybody have any spare change? Anybody?"

Needless to say, most of us avoided eye contact and hurried past him. But not Tolman.

The senator not only stopped when Homeless Guy approached, he started a real conversation with the man! And he kept talking with him for about ten minutes. No bum's rush for this guy.

I watched as Tolman took out his wallet and handed the man a bill. Then, amazingly, Tolman reached into his pocket, took out a pack of cigarettes, put one in his mouth, handed one to Homeless Guy, then lit up both of their smokes. Tolman and Homeless Guy conversed like two old buddies until their cigarettes were done, at which point they parted with a handshake and the senator headed to the State House.

The following week, I happened to bump into Tolman and I told him how I had witnessed his extraordinary kindness to a man who had to be one of the sorriest souls I had ever seen.

"You were so good to him," I said. "It was something to behold. How did you do that?"

The senator smiled for about half a second, waved off the compliment, and walked away without a word.

That's One Good Politician Who Can Go from Railroad Clerk to AFL-CIO President

2011-09-16T11:17:00.000-07:00

If all goes according to plan, Steve Tolman, the Assistant Majority Leader of the Massachusetts Senate, will be elected president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO on Oct. 7, five days after he turns 57. He will then resign from the Senate, where he is fourth from the top in the leadership pecking order.

For this son of a staunch union family and product of a blue-collar Watertown neighborhood, gaining the presidency of the largest, most prominent labor group in a major state is a huge achievement, and undoubtedly the fulfillment of a lifetime dream.

Tolman is a popular guy and he's done very well in politics, having entered the legislature as a state rep from Brighton in 1994, vaulted to the Senate in 1998, and moved steadily up through the ranks in the 40-member upper branch. On matters big and small, he has the ear of Senate President Terry Murray.

Many politicians would kill for the career this former railroad clerk has made for himself.

But when he takes the helm of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, replacing the retiring Bobby Haynes, Tolman will be in charge of a group that has 400,000 members. He will be an executive giving orders, not a lawmaker cajoling others for their votes. Any day of the week he wants it, Tolman will be able to commandeer a media spotlight that will put him in front of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of television viewers and radio listeners -- a far cry from his early days in public life, when it was mainly greenhorn reporters for low-wattage weeklies in his district dogging his steps.

Oh, and his bank account will undergo immediate improvement in October -- no small consideration for a devoted family man. (He and his wife have three children.)

One of the most remarkable aspects of Tolman's ascent has been its apparent ease. Haynes announced earlier in the summer that he was going to retire in the fall. One of Haynes's bright, young deputies, Tim Sullivan, immediately went to work securing the votes needed to replace him; it looked initially like Sullivan was an odds-on favorite. Then Tolman let it be known that he was seriously interested in the job and would not hesitate to leave the Senate to get it.

There followed a couple of months or more of ostensible quiet, although most observers figured that a fairly intense, behind-the-scenes battle was going on. This was an internal union contest and union guys know how to fight the way cats know how to stalk birds. They also don't give up without a fight.

At the end of August, just before Labor Day, Sullivan announced he was dropping his attempt to become president, meaning Tolman would be able to get the job practically by acclaim when the delegates from the various member unions of the AFL-CIO gather for the big vote.

"Rather than spend the next number of weeks campaigning against one another in pursuit of nearly identical goals," Sullivan told the State House News Service, "I am excited to become part of one team to build a plan for the future and unite the labor movement anew for many years to come."

Translation: Couldn't beat Tolman, had to join him.

In retrospect, Tolman had some considerable advantages going into this fight. He's older than Sullivan by 26 years, has long been recognized as labor's strongest voice and most effective advocate in the legislature, and has an impeccable union pedigree. After attending the Watertown public schools, Tolman graduated from the Harvard Trade Union Program and completed his bachelor's in law and labor studies at the University of Massachusetts while working for the railroads and becoming active in the Transportation Communications International Union (TCU). For years he served as local TCU chairman.

Tolman's late father was a railroad conductor and served as the local and general chairman of the United Transportation Union. His brother, John, is the vice president and national legislative representative of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen; one of his sisters is a former president of the state's largest nurses' union, the Massachusetts Nurses Association.

Once Steve Tolman becomes president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, the really hard work will begin. The restoration job they're handing him will be extremely difficult.

The recent drive by unions to stop the legislature from restricting their ability to negotiate changes in health benefits at the municipal employee level, which fell far short of the goal, only underscored the decline in union influence and power that has been going on for years. Tolman will be expected to reverse that decline.

We saw Bobby Haynes pull out all the rhetorical stops on the health benefits issue and the majority of legislators basically ignore him. Haynes is a good and intelligent man, a passionate and principled champion of labor, but maybe he was in the job too long, maybe people just stopped listening to him.

Steve Tolman will not be tuned out at the State House. People like him too much. Maybe that's why he won hands-down.

NEXT: How Tolman's style will work at the AFL-CIO.

Every Fall I Wonder Again Why Our Leaders Didn't Fight for a Stadium in Boston

2011-09-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

Fresh from their smash season-opening victory Monday night over the Miami Dolphins, the New England Patriots are getting ready for their home opener Sunday afternoon, September 18, against the Chargers of San Diego.

I'm even more excited than usual about a Patriots game because I'll be attending a pro game at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough on Sunday for the first time since the place opened in 2002. Also, it's a freebie: I'll be there as someone's guest in one of those obnoxiously plush corporate boxes. You bet I'll take all the luxury, pampering, drinks and viddles they treat me to. Why go to the coliseum if you don't want to act like a Roman?

Yeah, the Razor (as the Globe's Dan Shaughnessy likes to call Gillette Stadium) has it all: 68,000-plus seats, 46 permanent concession stands, 60 portable food and beverage stands, two gigantic (48 X 27 feet) scoreboards, a main concourse, an upper concourse, a special Putnam (as in investments) Club with seating for 6,600 fans, and four separate first aid stations for idiots like me who get too excited after every big play and end up spraining their wrists with the obligatory high-fiving. It even has a 12-story-high "lighthouse" near the main entrance that beckons the devoted more effectively than a church spire.

Gillette Stadium only has one problem: It is in Foxborough. On Route 1.

Boston to Foxborough is only 21 miles. When there's no traffic, it's a fairly quick ride. On game days, however, as many season ticket holders attest, it can easily take you one hour to drive there, find a parking space in one of the many $50-per-space parking lots that spring to temporary life, and hike a third of a mile or more to your seat in Spectacleland.

After the game, the travel away from this burb really gets rough.

From having attended a U-2 concert at Gillette, I know it can take an hour just to extricate your vehicle from one of those chaotic, fan-fleecing lots and crawl onto Route 1. Then it can take another 20 minutes to get to Route 95, at which time you have maybe a half-hour ride to Boston. If you're lucky.

On your way to the game, you're filled with anticipation, so the drive doesn't seem so bad. Afterwards, the inevitable letdown sets in, even if the Pats have won. You're tired, maybe a little beat up by all the booze and high-fat "snacks" you had to have, and the Monday morning blues are starting to wrap their heavy hands around your weary body and brain. The drive home then can feel like a penalty devised by your worst enemy.

In the late-1990s, there were two different plans to build a professional sports stadium as a home for the Patriots in Boston. One proposal would have sited it in South Boston and the other along Melnea Cass Boulevard in Roxbury, the "crosstown" site. Residents in both locations voiced strong initial objections and the city's political leaders basically folded without a fight.

I don't know if Gillette Stadium should be in South Boston or Roxbury, but it should be somewhere in Boston, somewhere where it can be approached via multiple routes and is served by several modes of transportation.

Boston is the Hub of New England, a city with world-class institutions, a tourist mecca. It is the capital of a major state with more than six million inhabitants. And Boston proper hosts teams in the major professional sports of baseball (Red Sox), basketball (Celtics) and hockey (Bruins).

That such a city does not also host a team as illustrious and popular as the New England Patriots is the mistake that will never go away. (Those aerial shots of Boston taken from blimps during commercial breaks do not cut it.)

A football game, even when it decides a championship, has no ultimate importance, which is another reason why a fan should not have to give up an entire day of his life to attend one, as many a Patriot fan now must do.

Take Another Two Weeks Off, Governor. Events Show You're the Superior Politician, Again.

2011-09-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

Governor Deval Patrick has been blasted by some Republicans for the amount of time he's taken off this summer. The three weeks he spent travelling to Maine and then Bermuda -- or was it Bermuda, then Maine? -- seemed to really rankle the folks in the workaholic wing of the GOP.

Me, I'm a firm believer in the adage, "Don't just do something, stand there!"

Patrick had barely turned the lights back on in the governor's office when he headed to Logan for a flight to California, where today he is addressing the Black Corporate Directors Conference in Laguna Beach. Republicans had the outrage machine cranked up again before the wheels were up on the governor's plane.

I don't know if the complainers sincerely believe Patrick is harming the Commonwealth by absenting himself from the State House, or if they're merely nursing leftover frustrations from the unsuccessful campaign to defeat him in 2010. Either way, I'm enjoying the spectacle of a party that espouses limited government yipping about someone not governing enough.

Might it also be that Patrick's critics are angry because he's getting the job done and making it look easy?

Take the casino bill that just emerged into daylight, for example. It's the biggest thing going now on Beacon Hill, and it reflects almost entirely the governor's view of how Massachusetts should raise its gambling act to the next level.

Or take the way Patrick, earlier in the summer, waltzed once again through the political house of horrors that is the Big Dig, following a Boston Globe extravaganza on torrents in the Tip O'Neill tunnel and turmoil in top leadership at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. Last time I checked, the media was practically cooing about what a fabulous guy the new MassDOT secretary, Rich Davey, is.

Davey is Patrick's fourth transportation chief in five years but people are focusing not on the revolving door at Ten Park Plaza but rather on the new guy's intellectual dexterity and wisdom-beyond-his-years. The governor instinctively knew the best way to rise above the sea of troubles at Transportation: name a boyish boss with real transport chops who plays well with the media.

No matter what your political inclinations are, you have to concede that Deval Patrick is a very smart guy, a superior politician, and an executive who quickly grew into the governor's role after making some rookie mistakes. Patrick is now pretty much at the top of his game. If not, the President of the United States would not have him down to Washington all the time to lend weight to his agenda, as Obama did once again this week on the eve of announcing his new jobs bill.

A column this week in Time magazine by Joe Klein helps illuminate our governor's skills, although that was not its purpose. Klein was writing about the Republican candidates for the presidential nomination in 2012 and the differences between running in the primaries and in the general election when he observed, "...general elections are different. The superior politician always wins. Think about it. Always." Consider that in relation to the general election for Governor of Massachusetts in November, 2010, when the three candidates asking for your vote were Patrick, Charlie Baker and Tim Cahill.

Patrick's life is a classic American success story, confirming our best thoughts and renewing our hopes about our country. He wears his success well. ("Bearing is fate," the Romans said.) Most people, I believe, are impressed by his equipoise and benevolence, his total lack of neuroses and malice.

This is a man who grew up in a Chicago housing project and now lives in Milton, one of the best suburbs ever invented. He holds an office once held by giants on the American stage, (Hello, Mr. Hancock, Mr. Coolidge, Mr. Herter and Mr. Saltonstall), and he weekends at an estate in the Berkshires, (gotta love the way he's perfected the art of campaigning in western Massachusetts while visiting his holdings there).

Cynics can quibble that Patrick got some big breaks along the way, namely those scholarships to Milton Academy and Harvard, but I say he basically made his own breaks -- and maximized them to a fare thee well -- by dint of his inner qualities, the "stuff" of his character, which would have been revealed as false long ago by the rigors of life in the public eye, if indeed it was not real stuff.

Scott Brown has to hope that Patrick stays true to his word, i.e., that he is not interested in serving in the U.S. Senate.

Sal's Story Approaches Sorrowful End: the Removal of His Freedom

2011-09-06T13:30:00.000-07:00

Is there a reason to believe that former Massachusetts House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi has a chance of successfully appealing his conviction on corruption charges?

If Sal DiMasi's lawyer cannot convince a judge there is, the former Speaker will be in a jail cell very soon.

It all comes to a head this Thursday in the federal district courthouse in Boston, where Sal will be sentenced for his conviction on charges of steering two big software contracts to Cognos Corp. for illegal cash payments.

The prosecutors are recommending that Sal be given a sentence of 12 years and seven months; his lawyer is arguing that no more than a three years is warranted.

No matter the case or the defendant, and no matter the level of interest one has in either, it is chilling to watch a heretofore free man taken into custody at the conclusion of a sentencing hearing.

At the brusque command of a court officer, the defendant has to step forward, extend his arms and hands, and be clamped into steel handcuffs. Two or three court officers then march him out of the room by a side door as the muffled cries and sobs of his closest relatives fill the air. The next time these folks see the defendant, he'll be behind glass, wearing a prison-issue jumpsuit, and they will converse by phone under the watchful eyes and ears of the guards. That conversation will most likely be taped. Legally.

Free-man-to-convict is a painful physical, psychological and spiritual transition, regardless of the new convict's age, gender or station in life. For Sal DiMasi, who is 66 years old, a skilled attorney, and once one of the most powerful men in our Commonwealth, it will be especially painful.

I have spoken to a few people who have served 30 or 60 days in the house of correction, and I have heard the recollections of one man who served seven years in a federal penitentiary. Each has said how torturously long and fearful those times behind bars were.

Only someone who has never thought seriously about what it means to be incarcerated could regard a three-year sentence as getting off lightly.

The way things happened in my life, Sal DiMasi was a friend of friends of mine, but never my friend, although I certainly liked him on the few, passing occasions we met. Those who are his longtime friends have always spoken highly of him, always said what a good guy he is, what a big heart he has, etc.

Whenever I happened to glimpse him in action at the State House or at a fundraiser for a member of the House, he looked for all the world like a genuinely good guy, a person who enjoyed being with people, didn't take himself too seriously, and was a natural at "working the room."

Unquestionably, he was beloved in his North-End-centered Boston district, which he represented for more than 30 consecutive years. Sal is a big man in the North End -- and rightly so -- yet he never got too big for his old neighborhood.

I will not try to defend him or explain away the charges against Speaker DiMasi. I will not cite all the good things Sal did during his many years in office, even though they were so numerous as to defy tabulation, because that is beside the point. The jury was not asked to decide if he did more good than bad.

Sooner or later, Sal will be clamped in cuffs, confined against his will, and ordered around day and night. If someone addresses him there as Mr. Speaker, it will probably be as a taunt, a prelude to an insult, or worse.

That's hard to think about. I can't imagine how hard it will be to live it.

Hope to God he survives.

Summer's End a Good Time to Consider the Public-Private Partnership that Produced a Gem for Boston

2011-09-02T16:05:00.000-07:00

Though bracketed by chilly mornings and evenings that devour light the way starvelings take nourishment at a feast, the days of September are among the best that summer has to offer.

This Labor Day, I suggest we all pause to consider one of the sublime joys of summer in the city: a brown-bag lunch in the little piece of paradise in Boston's Post Office Square. It's a pleasure that will soon be denied us.

I'm talking about The Norman B. Leventhal Park, built on a site previously occupied by a parking garage, which was ugly even by the meager standards of garage architecture.

Norman Leventhal, builder and philanthropist, had the vision to see tall trees, flowing fountains, and vine-shaded benches where there had been for decades only concrete and asphalt. He saw a nature preserve in the Financial District, a place of respite for the weary souls who spend their days in cubicles and ditches, courtrooms and kitchens, offices and stores, classrooms and clinics.

And Norman Leventhal had the practical skills, honed by years in the construction industry, and the political skills, developed through a lifetime of living and working in a very parochial city, to lead effectively the band of civic and business leaders who turned that vision into a reality.

A model of public-private partnering, the park was completed in the summer of 1992. It became an immediate sensation.

People marveled at the perfect scale and the many features of its design -- the wonders of plant, flower, stone and water waiting to be discovered and appreciated there. They loved the way the variety of trees provided shade, while also allowing sun to flood the elongated triangle that forms the park's center. And they positively luxuriated in the cool air that stirs about the fountain gracing its northern end, near Milk Street.

People flocked to the oasis in Post Office Square, and they flock to it still.

Go there at lunchtime, Monday through Friday, and it's hard to find a place to sit on the low, curving, granite walls, nevermind the benches. But you can always find a spot on the lawn. And if your wardrobe can't tolerate the grass and soil, no problem: there are cushions you can borrow for free, courtesy of The Friends of Post Office Square, the group that runs the park and the parking garage hidden beneath it.

The longer the park was open, the more people realized what a gem the city had there, and the more they acknowledged how much is owed to the man at the heart of the transformation of Post Office Square. Fourteen years ago, on September 16, 1997, it was officially dedicated as The Norman B. Leventhal Park.

That man graduated from the Boston Latin School in 1933 and is now well into his nineties, God bless him. This Labor Day, I will remember how he made the life of every working person who ever strolled his park a little better, a little brighter, and say a prayer of thanks for this great Bostonian.

Thank you, Mr. Leventhal.

...How important are those "nature breaks" we take in the park?

From an article this past week in the Wall Street Journal, ("Coffee Break? Walk in the Park? Why Unwiding is Hard," 8/30/11), we learn that, "Researchers are zeroing in on some of the circumstances that bring about optimal mental refreshment," and that, "Taking in sights and sounds of nature appears to be especially beneficial for our minds..."

Shirley S. Wang, the author of the article, goes on to say that, "This (research) work follows research by Dr. (Marc) Berman and partners at the University of Michigan showing that performance on memory and attention tests improved by 20% after study subjects paused for a walk through an arboretum. When these people were sent on a break to stroll down a busy street in town, no cognitive boost was detected."

Does that mean that all the companies that employ people who regularly enjoy The Norman B. Leventhal Park have him to thank for having more productive work forces? I say, Yes!

Jim McGovern Dreams the Impossible Dream: Surtax to Pay for Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

2011-08-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

You hear all the time from Tea Party Republicans how the United States has a "spending problem, not a revenue problem."

In this vein, presidential candidate Michele Bachmann declared the other day that the federal budget is morbidly obese and needs to be put a radical diet. As the winner of the recent Iowa straw poll, Congresswoman Bachmann is considered a leading candidate for the Republican nomination.

The Tea Partiers mean by this kind of talk that they will not, under any circumstances, ever support tax increases to deal with our staggeringly unbelievable federal budget deficit. No Sireee! Spending got us into this mess; cutting spending can get us out of it.

As we saw during the prolonged stalemate/fiasco over raising the federal debt ceiling, in July and early this month, the Tea Partiers put on their tri-cornered hats every morning along with an impervious coat of moral superiority.

Ever seen a big Tea Party guy at a microphone answering a question about making a deal with the Democrats to pair a bit of tax increasing with a lot of budget slashing? Their contempt for the other side is as thick as the humidity in D.C. this time of year.

They may not say it, but you know that many of them believe those calling for higher taxes are traitors to the founding principles of America, and that patriots like themselves are the only ones standing between America and ruin.

To maintain the sheen on that armor of righteousness, however, they must avoid certain grubby realities, like the huge cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which accounts for more than $1 trillion of our current deficit.

Despite the big defeat the Republicans handed President Obama on the debt ceiling, there are still some Democrats in Washington who have the effrontery to keep pushing taxes. Jim McGovern, the Congressman from Worcester whose mentor was Joe Moakley, recently made news by saying that Congress's new debt-reduction "Super-Committee" (of which our senior senator, John Kerry, is a prominent member) should definitely have a "war surtax" on its agenda.

"These wars ought to be paid for and not put on a credit card so that our kids will have to pay for this in the future," McGovern told the Washington Post. See http://www/washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-war-tax-its-still-not-a-bad-idea/

"It's morally wrong," McGovern emphasized, "for members (of Congress) to call for support of our soldiers and then not ask the rest of us to pay for it...or have it left to the poor and middle-income and seniors to bear the sacrifice along with our soldiers and their families. That's wrong."

Who does McGovern think he is, talking morals when this deficit is all about spending?

Having Fun on Twitter at Khazei's Expense, Fehrnstrom Couldn't Resist Himself

2011-08-26T14:59:00.001-07:00

If you've been following the story about Eric Fehrnstrom impersonating senate candidate Alan Khazei on Twitter, you have to be wondering why.

Why did Fehrnstrom risk embarrassing himself and the high-powered Republicans served by his Chestnut Hill-based consulting firm, The Shawmut Group, by writing a series of tweets that aimed to undercut just one of the eight persons currently vying for the honor of challenging Scott Brown in November, 2012?

Khazei is a likeable and accomplished gentleman, but he he has never held elective office. He was unable to win the senate nomination the first time he tried (2009) and is not exactly busting out of the pack in his second attempt. When's the last time you heard someone say, "That Khazei guy has 'Senator' written all over him."

Why would Fehrnstrom, a top advisor to both Brown and Mitt Romney, go to the trouble of setting up a false Twitter account and spend time composing pretend tweets under the rhyme-name "CrazyKhazei" ?

No one following this account could have believed it was the candidate actually speaking when Fehrnstrom wrote stuff like, "I promise to devote all my time in office to making gay videos. Shame on Scott Brown for focusing on jobs!" or this, "Just got back from sunny California. Thanks to all the elitists for donating to my campaign."

There was no strategic value in this endeavor.

When Fehrnstrom revealed his identity this week by mistakenly sending a "CrazyKhazei" tweet through his own Twitter account, there were the predictable cries of "dirty politics" from the Democrats. Crocodile tears of outrage flowed in the bastions of the elite.

To his credit, Fehrnstrom did not try to cover up, deny or explain away his involvement, nor did he put on a show of mortification and sorrow. "Sometimes we take our politics too seriously," he said, "and this was my way of lightening things up."

We should take him at his word.

Fehrnstrom started his professional life (if you can call it that) as a newspaperman, and he headed the Boston Herald's State House bureau for several years before becoming a press aide to former State Treasurer Joe Malone. My theory is, he was simply using "CrazyKhazei" as an escape valve for his wit.

These were the funny lines that came to him unbidden at all hours of the day, the thought bubbles that popped over his head as he racked up the billable hours in those office towers with the big-paying clients. Once they came to him, he had to share them. Reporters can't resist this kind of thing. They're possessed by a demon insisting to be read and appreciated for his cleverness.

Good thing Fehrnstrom couldn't resist. We do take our politics too seriously nowadays.

Geography, Not Ego, Explains Why Olver Is in No Hurry to Take His Pension

2011-08-23T13:30:00.000-07:00

Massachusetts will have to give up one of its 10 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives next year as part of a national redistricting process related to population growth and population shifts that occurred from 2001 to 2010.

Unless one person now sitting in the Massachusetts Congressional delegation voluntarily retires, the redistricting process will result in two of the incumbents running against each other.

The committee charged with drawing the lines of the nine new Congressional districts, composed of representatives and senators now serving in the Massachusetts legislature, is rushing to complete its work and is disinclined to provide sneak previews to anyone.

Speculation is intense. Will the ultimate death match pit rookie Bill Keating vs. veteran Steve Lynch, or will it be Nikki Tsongas, the only woman in the delegation, vs. John Tierney, who many feel was weakened by the money laundering case involving his wife and brother-in-law last year?

Meantime, many people look at 75-year-old John Olver, who has represented one of the state's two western districts for many years, and wonder, Why will he not retire? Why will he not spare his fellow office holders much redistricting pain and forestall a hard-fought election between a Keating and a Lynch, or a Tsongas and a Tierney?

The temptation is to regard Olver, who has considerable clout as a ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, as selfish and power-hungry. It's wrong to succumb to that temptation, not because one should avoid unflattering thoughts about people in public life but because one should avoid obvious thoughts. The obvious in politics (or any endeavor for that matter) is so often wrong.

Olver's reasons for staying put, in my opinion, have almost everything to do with geography and practically nothing to do with ego. He's a Western Massachusetts guy (with a capital W) standing up for his region against the perennially more powerful and entrenched interests in the east.

If you're from Boston, or anywhere in eastern Massachusetts, (say any place within Route 495), you're likely to be oblivious to how folks in western Massachusetts, (say everywhere on the other side of the Shrewsbury), feel disadvantaged and overlooked by the more heavily populated and self-absorbed east.

Have you ever heard the old line about Boston being the only place where a person can stand at sea level and look down on the rest of the country? Well, a lot of the people who feel looked down upon live between the Connecticut River and the New York border.

So when a John Olver is told it would be good for Massachusetts if he would shuffle quietly from the scene and start to partake of his Congressional pension, he rightly asks himself, "Good for whom in Massachusetts?" And he quickly answers, "Not good for the people where I'm from, the people I am sworn to serve."

Today, western Massachusetts has two Congressman: Olver and Springfield's Richie Neal.

If, in 2013, they have only Richie Neal protecting their interests in the U.S. House, they will be worse off than they are today. Simple. You don't need to be a college professor, as John Olver once was, to understand something like that.

Olver is fortunate to have a powerful ally in this regard, Amherst State Senator and Massachusetts Senate President Pro Tem Stan Rosenberg, who is the Senate chair of the redistricting committee. Before he entered politics, the Revere-bred Rosenberg was an aide to Olver when he was in the legislature.

Skeptics are saying Rosenberg will not consent to a one-district western Massachusetts because he harbors dreams of one day soon succeeding Olver in Congress. Maybe he does. But I say that Rosenberg is doing what's best for western Massachusetts today and letting politics take care of itself tomorrow. Indeed, this is likely one of those not-unusual instances where good policymaking is good politics.

It doesn't hurt Rosenberg's chances of successfully defending a two-district west that he undoubtedly has the support of another powerful Western Massachusetts politician in the legislature, the lovable Steve Brewer of Barre, chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

Lesson of the Lawrence Recall: Don't Sign Your Name If You Can't Take the Pain

2011-08-19T13:24:00.000-07:00

Many people in the City of Lawrence are unhappy and upset with the way their mayor, William Lantigua, is doing (or not doing) his job.

The anti-Lantigua sentiments are deep and widespread, such that organizers of a recent drive to recall Hizzoner in a special election had little difficulty gathering thousands of signatures on a recall petition, 5,483 signatures to be exact.

Of that number, 1,117 were ruled invalid by local election officials, leaving the petition with 4,366 good signatures -- far short of the 5,232 needed to bring about a recall election.

Mayor Lantigua was naturally overjoyed. A former member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and the city's first-ever Latino chief executive, he couldn't help gloating a bit. His antagonists were taunted for, among other things, not doing their homework.

The mayor and the people around him are good at hardball politics, and it wasn't long before a pro-Lantigua/anti-recall group, YoNoFirmo.com, posted on its web site the names and addresses of the 4,000-plus Lawrence residents whose petition signatures were deemed valid. (YoNoFirmo is Spanish for "I do not sign.")

Intimidation, recall forces immediately cried!

"We've been getting oodles of e-mails and calls from people saying they're concerned or afraid," Anthony DiFruscia, a lawyer for It's Your Right, the group leading the campaign to depose Lantigua, was quoted as saying in the Boston Globe on August 17.

DiFruscia also reportedly declared, "This just isn't the American way. This is not democracy as we understand it."

And Wayne Hayes, an It's Your Right organizer, said, "There's real fear from residents that people will start coming to their houses and trashing them or assaulting them. The fear in their voices is heartbreaking," according to the Globe.

It's never good to see people trembling in fear. And if any recall petition signers are ever directly threatened or harmed, they deserve our sympathy and support. Everyone should rally to their defense.

YoNoFirmo.com, nevertheless, should not be villified for publishing those names and addresses on the web.

That information is a public record; anyone is entitled to scrutinize it in any format.

With all due respect to Atty. DiFruscia, the methods of YoNoFirmo are emphatically "the American way." Democracy is best conducted out in the open, where everyone can see what everyone else is doing.

There may be some people who signed that petition not realizing their names and addresses would be made public, but it's hard to feel sorry for anyone in that category, no matter how old or weak they may be.

In our system, you don't deserve to be counted unless you're willing to stand up.

We have largely forgotten that citizen participation in a democracy is not risk-free, that it fundamentally requires some backbone. It is a truth our ancestors naturally understood and accepted.

Pauline Maier, for example, describes in her book, "American Scripture, Making the Declaration of Independence," how the Continental Congress in the Spring of 1776 asked the citizens of the 13 British colonies that became the United States of America if it should declare the American people and territories free and independent of what was then the world's most powerful empire.

She tells how the Massachusetts assembly, in May of that year, "asked the inhabitants of each town in the colony to debate, 'in full Meeting warned for that Purpose,' an extraordinary topic: if the honorable Continental Congress should decide that, for the safety of the United Colonies, it was necessary to declare them independent of Great Britain, would 'they the said Inhabitants...solemnly engage with their Lives and Fortunes to Support the Congress in the Measure"? (Bold facing added.)

The Assembly deliberately proposed the question to the people of Massachusetts in this "unusually personal way," Ms. Maier writes, "and chose its words carefully," because, "In British law, death and forfeiture of estate were the punishment for treason."

Thus warned that they could be executed and their properties seized if this experiment in freedom went badly, the men of Massachusetts (only male property owners could vote at that time) convened in scores of town meetings across the colony and voted in every recorded instance to endorse a declaration of independence.

If, 235 years ago, our forebears had succumbed to the very real fear of death, there would be no U.S.A. for us to enjoy today.

If they could risk their lives to claim and declare publicly their rights as a free people, how can we allow anything to inhibit us from acting on our political beliefs when our consciences are telling us to do so?

It's Not Easy, but Please Try to Endure the Suspense of Warren's 'Listening Tour'

2011-08-18T10:55:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Warren is conducting a "listening tour" in Massachusetts as she wrestles with the question, "Do I see a United States senator when I look in the mirror?"

Warren, a Harvard Law professor who was President Obama's unconfirmable choice to head the new federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, (Republican poohbahs in D.C. hate her), has also formed an exploratory committee to raise funds for a "possible challenge" to Scott Brown.

"Elizabeth has spent the last week listening to people from across the Commonwealth as she considers a campaign for U.S. Senate," said Kyle Sullivan, her spokesman. (Yes, she already has a paid mouthpiece.) "She wants to continue this conversation and the exploratory committee will assist her in doing so."

There are almost as many artificial devices in politics as there are in Orlando, Florida, and one of the greatest (and most harmless) of these has to be the listening tour.

A would-be candidate descends, with entourage, on a small town and pretends for a few minutes that his future is being decided then and there by the Average Joes on Main Street: the dog catcher, hair stylist, store clerk, letter carrier, local crank or curmudgeon.

Or the would-be candidate appears in someone's living room after supper one night to introduce himself to a hand-picked audience of sympathetic neighbors and activists from whatever party the "listener" happens to belong to.

Do you think we'll ever see the day when someone returns from a listening tour, calls a press conference, and announces, "People think I'm a jerk. I better not run. I'd get killed."

There is some potential real value in a listening tour, I guess. If the would-be candidate finds he can't handle the softball questions in those living rooms, for example, he might decide that campaigning wasn't his cup of tea and return quietly to the private sector.

Professor Warren, as you would imagine, is having no difficulties in those rooms filled with Dems who want Brown gone from The People's Seat.

The chances are higher that I will compete in this Saturday's Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in Boston Harbor than Elizabeth Warren will decide not to run for the senate at the end of her listening tour.

Pro-Life Group Has Reason for Targeting Universal Health Care, and It's a Killer

2011-08-16T15:16:00.001-07:00

Massachusetts Citizens for Life (MCL) wants to blow up the state's unique system of universal health care coverage.

The organization known for its pro-life/anti-abortion activism is pursuing a question on the 2012 ballot that would ask voters to repeal a key provision of the 2006 universal coverage law: the mandate that all citizens obtain coverage or pay a penalty.

"Repeal Romney Care" is the name MCL has given to its ballot initiative. See http://www.repeal-romneycare.com/

"Currently health care is much more embedded in state law than federal," MCL says on this site. "We cannot just repeal the whole law...so we are repealing the individual mandate, which we feel will be the start of bringing down the whole law."

From a positioning standpoint, it makes sense for MCL to say it's dead set against "RomneyCare" rather than "universal health care." The former sounds like a scheme foisted on the public by a misguided politician, as in the pejorative "ObamaCare," while the latter sounds like a populist's dream come true.

MCL says its opposition is based on the belief that the Massachusetts system has produced unsustainably high costs and that these costs are leading to the rationing of health care.

"When a program runs out of money, or imposes price controls, as Governor Patrick did, rationing occurs," MCL says. "ObamaCare is intentionally designed to cut funding and impose rationing. In Massachusetts, rationing is the unintended consequence of funding with general revenue.

"We are not saying the individual mandate, in and of itself, causes rationing. We are saying that the whole law causes rationing and repealing the individual mandate is the best way to start to repeal the whole law."

MCL notes that Massachusetts has the highest per capita health care costs in the nation. That situation, however, existed long before universal health care coverage came along.

"We still want quality health care for all," MCL asserts on its web site, (bold facing added), "so it is time to learn from our mistakes and move on."

Let's consider that statement closely.

MCL wants to repeal the universal health care coverage law, which has resulted in nearly 98% of the population of Massachusetts having coverage. Among children and senior citizens, those coverage rates are even higher: 99.8% and 99.6%, respectively.

They want us to kill a system that has brought about health care for virtually all citizens for the first time ever in any part of the U.S. And they are offering us the hope that, at some undefined point in the future, we will be able to create a new system that will: (a) deliver quality health care to everyone, and (b) guarantee that health care will never be rationed.

Human life is precious, and every life has incalculable value.

I respect what MCL does in advocating for the rights of the unborn.

But I struggle to understand the logic, never mind the morality, of pro-lifers seeking the destruction of something that has made life-saving care available to a large group of our fellow citizens who never had it before, including some the most vulnerable members of our society, little kids.

AN AFTERWORD ON THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE...

The government compels us to purchase insurance if we wish to own and operate a motor vehicle. And the government, to ensure the health of schoolchildren, compels us to have our kids vaccinated against various diseases if we wish to enroll them in school. So why can't the government compel us to purchase health insurance?

Here's another way to think about this:

None of us would say that a 25-year-old man or woman badly injured in an accident should not be able to obtain treatment at a hospital because he or she lacked health insurance. In fact, the law compels hospitals to provide emergency care to all who need it. The injured, uninsured person, therefore, benefits from the legal compulsion hospitals operate under to provide emergency care. Why is that compulsion good and the compulsion to purchase health insurance bad, especially when taxpayers are ultimately forced to subsidize the "free" emergency care that an injured person may receive?

I Think I'll Be Scratching My Head Till the Day We All Go Bankrupt with Our Non-Socialized Medicine

2011-08-12T14:13:00.000-07:00

There are lots of things in life I don't understand, and the more I try to understand them, the more perplexed and frustrated I become.

"Mental progress seems to elude me," I said to my wife the other night.

"You're just realizing that?" she replied.

I was thinking once again of the world's-most-expensive health care system, which we happen to have in the U.S.A, and of how we pay for health care, and of how other nations seem to have their health care acts together more than we do.

I had just read a column by Ezra Klein on the Bloomberg news service, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-08-11/in-washington-gridlock-is-more-costly... and was furiously scratching my head.

Klein wrote, "If the U.S. simply had the per-person health-care costs of Switzerland, which hosts the second-most-expensive health-care system in the world, we would spend $3,000 less per person and save about $900 billion a year. Assuming we need to reduce deficits by about $4 trillion over the next 10 years, those savings would do the heavy lifting with about $5 trillion to spare."

We can't have a health care system like Switzerland's, however, even though it would wipe out our federal budget deficit and almost certainly improve our economy in myriad ways, because Switzerland is in Europe, and Europeans have socialized medicine. We can't act like Europeans because we do everything better than Europeans, and we hate socialism. Yeah, we're Americans.
Socialism leads to the destruction of freedom, as we have seen not only in all those European countries, but also in other countries that have socialized medicine, such as Israel, Japan and Canada.

A columnist in the Boston Herald, Holly Robichaud, struck this chord earlier this week when putting the knock on some folks who had the crazy idea of organizing and participating in a conference on single-payer health care at Framingham State University, including State Rep. Tom Sannicandro of Ashland and State Senator Jamie Eldridge of Acton.

"What do Beacon Hill politicians do on summer vacation?" wrote Robichaud. "They hold a meeting to talk strategy on how to implement single-payer health care, more commonly known as socialized medicine, or postal care. 'Exploring the Single-Payer Option,' a conference last week at Framingham State University, brought together local postalized health-care enthusiasts to plot how they can foist it on us."

Robichaud added, "It is not enough that we have Obamneycare, now they want a full takeover of health care."

Here's what I don't understand, though:

All of the Europeans, Canadians, Japanese and Israelis that I have ever met or done business with do not seem to be terribly burdened and/or disadvantaged by their socialized medical systems. Nor do they seem to have lost their personal liberties under the yoke of these systems.

None of these folks has ever asserted to me that his respective health care system is perfect. No system is perfect.

But maybe, just maybe, these are systems that work better for the vast majority of their citizens than does the system in our country, while having the distinct advantage of being less expensive.
I also don't understand how you can stop so many otherwise reasonable people in this country from even considering a single-payer health care system for all citizens (like we already have for the elderly in Medicare) simply by labelling it "socialized medicine" or "postal care."

And I don't understand our apparent willingness to bankrupt this nation through excessive and unsustainable spending on health care under our system rather than consider an alternative like the one used in Switzerland or Japan or Israel or Canada, or a mixture thereof.

SOME THOUGHTS ON 'SERIAL ENTREPRENEURS' IN GOVERNMENT...

In a recent press release on the appointment of a new member of the board of directors of a quasi-public development agency, the Patrick administration described the appointee as a "serial entrepreneur."

That term always tickles me, evoking as it does the image of a robotic overachiever locked in a pattern of selling one business and immediately starting another. ("Stop me before I incorporate again!")

I can't help but think of these serial entrepreneurs as free-ranging nuisances, barging endlessly into loan officers' cubicles all across the U.S.A., eyes afire, to demand million-dollar loans, Stat!

Serial is an adjective for killers and adulterers, not the calm, intelligent, buttoned-down folks produced by our graduate schools of business.

I also don't like how "serial entrepreneur" manages to flatter the subject by setting him apart from your average, garden-variety entrepreneur, who may only be involved in two or three successful businesses over the course of his lifetime, the slacker.

Who Are You Going to Believe on the 'Tea Party Downgrade?' Palin or Kerry?

2011-08-09T10:41:00.000-07:00

Democrats like our senior United States senator, John F. Kerry, are "shamelessly cynical" and "dishonest" for blaming the Tea Party for Standard & Poor's downgrading of the country's credit rating from AAA to AA+. Those are Sarah Palin's words from a message posted on her Facebook page last night.

"Blaming the Tea Party for our credit downgrade," the former Republican candidate for vice president also said, "is akin to Nero blaming the Christians for burning Rome. Tea Party Americans weren't the ones 'fiddling' while our country's fiscal house was going up in smoke."

I wonder if ex-Alaska Governor Palin, before approving that message, actually read Standard & Poor's "research update" on the downgrade, which appeared Friday afternoon, August 5, under the title, "United States of America Long-Term Rating Lowered to 'AA+' On Political Risks And Rising Debt Burden; Outlook Negative" ?

I've read that update, (it's only seven-and-a-half pages long), and it was clear to me that the prolonged impasse in the Congress over raising the debt ceiling, a quagmire designed and constructed by the new Tea Party Republicans in the House, was the main reason, but not the only reason, Standard and Poor's dropped the credit rating of the U.S. for the first time in history.

The downgrade alone will cost our nation -- and we its taxpayers -- billions of dollars more in longterm borrowing costs over the coming years, so Democrats are hardly out of line when they point to this irony: Tea Party Republicans wouldn't compromise with President Obama because they're opposed in their marrow to any tax increases, ever, regardless of how fabulously wealthy the taxpayers in question may be. By not compromising, they helped bring about the equivalent of a tax increase on Americans in every income bracket.

Don't take my word when I say Kerry is right and Palin is wrong. Consider instead these actual words from the Standard & Poor's research update:

"We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenue is less likely than we previously assumed, and will remain a contentious and fitful process. We also believe that the fiscal consolidation plan that the Congress and the Administration agreed to this week falls short of the amount that we believe is necessary to stabilize the general government debt burden by the middle of the decade...

"The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy. Despite this year's wide-ranging debate, in our view, the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge, and, as we see it, the resulting agreement fell well short of the comprehensive fiscal consolidation program that some proponents had envisaged until quite recently...

"In our view, the difficulty in framing a consensus on fiscal policy weakens the government's ability to manage public finances and diverts attention from the debate over how to achieve more balanced and dynamic economic growth in an era of fiscal stringency and private-sector deleveraging...

"A new political consensus might (or might not) emerge after the 2012 elections, but we believe that by then, the government debt burden will likely be higher, the needed medium-term fiscal adjustment potentially greater, and the inflection point on the U.S. population's demographics and other age-related spending drivers closer at hand."

"Prolonged controversy."

"Political brinksmanship"

"Less stable," "less effective" and "less predictable" governance and policy-making.

Debt ceilings and default threats used as "political bargaining chips."

Who brought those to the sausage-making party?

Consider also this: Senator Kerry and President Obama reacted to the credit rating downgrade by calling upon leaders of both parties to return immediately to the bargaining table and create a new, much more comprehensive fiscal consolidation plan that would address precisely the concerns raised in Standard & Poor's research update. This is the kind of "grand bargain" that President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner were close to reaching at one point, roughly two weeks before the debt limit deadline of August 2, but which Boehner was forced ultimately to disavow by Tea Party Republicans because it would have raised taxes on citizens earning more than quarter-of-a-million dollars a year.

As Kerry said this past Sunday on Meet The Press, "This is the Tea Party downgrade because a minority of people in the House of Representatives countered even the will of many Republicans in the United States Senate who were prepared to do a bigger deal, to do a $4.7 trillion, a $4 trillion (deal), have a mix of reductions and reforms in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, but also recognized that we needed to do some revenue."

In answering a question from Meet The Press host David Gregory, Kerry also said:

"I think this is one of the most telling, important moments in our country's history right now. We've had a fairly straightforward economic road throughout the 20th Century. But now, David, this poses a set of choices. It's not just about a recession, it's about a financial crisis and a structure of our economy, which really has been misallocating capital.

"We've had an enormous amount of capital going into arbitration over these last years -- phony deals, commissions, not creating jobs. And the real problem for our country is not the short-term debt. We can deal with that. It's the long-term debt. It's the structure of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid measured against the demographics of our nation. That, then juxtaposed to the lack of jobs and job creation and growth.

"That's our problem, structural. And what we need is a Washington that stops this bickering, that gets rid of these hard positions that I noticed even in Speaker Boehner's comments about the downgrade, politicizing it in the sense that, you know, sort of blaming it on the Democrats and the lack of decision.

"Three times he (Obama) was refused that (grand bargain) deal because there were some people in the Republican Party, and Mitch McConnell even admitted this, who wanted to default. He said there were people in his party who are willing to shoot the hostage. In the end, they found that the hostage was worth ransoming.

"This is not about ransom. This is about our nation. It's about our country. It's about growth. It's about statesmanship. I know John McCain and many of his colleagues in the Senate are prepared to sit down and be serious about how we deal with this quickly because our nation's security, our nation's future, is at stake in an unprecedented way."

To Sarah Palin, that sounds like fiddling. To me, it sounds like a very sad friend trying to stop you from killing yourself.

If You Agree with Senator Moynihan, You'll Like This New Judicial Reorg Law

2011-08-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

In the past week, both branches of the Massachusetts legislature enacted, and the governor signed into law, House Bill 3644, an act "relative to the reorganization of the judicial system of the Commonwealth."

A response to a 2010 special investigation and report that found "systemic abuse and corruption" in the hiring and promotion practices of the Massachusetts Probation Department, H.B. 3644 is a truly serious effort at reform.

As long as H.B. 3644 is on the books, legislators will never again be able to use the Probation Department as a personal hiring service for their relatives, political supporters and constituents.

And no citizen with a directionless 20-something son or daughter will be able to secure a lifetime job in Probation for the kid simply because that citizen's state representative or senator happens to be in a position where he exercises considerable influence over the Probation Department's budget.

The new law stipulates that every applicant for the job of probation officer shall pass a written application that tests his/her "knowledge, skills and abilities which can be objectively and reliably measured and which are required to perform the duties of the position of probation officer."

Only after passing that test will a probation officer candidate be officially considered for hiring, a process that will involve, one, an "inquiry into and review of the applicant's education, prior work history and other accomplishments to ensure that the applicant is well suited for the culture of the organization and will further the organization's stated goals;" two, "behaviorally-based interviews;" and, three, "candidate assessments, including case study, presentation and writing assessments, provided, however, that the candidate assessments shall focus on the specific requirements of the position."

Job recommendations for probation officer candidates will not receive any consideration whatsoever until the candidates have successfully completed this process. And all recommendations given to candidates will be available for review by the public. The same goes for any recommendations made for Probation Department employees who seek promotions.

H.B. 3644 further requires that all applicants for jobs within the three branches of state government, not just the judicial branch, must submit in writing the names of all immediate family members who are state employees. For those who are hired, this information will be permanently available to the public.

The legislature faced a huge challenge in the wake of the Boston Globe Spotlight Team investigation into Probation Department hiring and promoting, and the resulting investigation by the special counsel appointed by the Supreme Judicial Court, Attorney Paul Ware: Restore public trust in the department, and thereby improve the standing of the legislature itself, which had definitely been diminished by these revelations.

H.B. 3644 is a worthy response to that challenge because it sets new professional standards for probation officers and other court personnel and makes the hiring and promition processes transparent.

In the sense intended by the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who always asserted that "secrecy is for losers," one could say that this bill aims to guarantee that only winners secure these important jobs in the Probation Department.

Give the legislature and governor credit for honoring the spirit of Senator Moynihan, God rest his soul.

Most legislators, I am sure, are pleased that they have reformed the court system and its subsidiary, Probation, in this way -- and also pleased that they have mainly taken themselves off the hook for getting some not especially qualified people into the system. Now, when somebody calls, hoping to get their mediocre (or worse) relative a job there, legislators can honestly respond, "Sorry. The law says I can't stick my nose into this. There's very little I can do."

Since I Agree with Senator Moynihan, I'm Ready to Step Right Up for My New Lobbyist Badge

2011-08-02T14:40:00.000-07:00

My mother never raised me to be a lobbyist, but that doesn't mean she was disappointed when I became one in 1998.

While she may have had the kind of doubts about the lobbying trade that most people seem to have, she had such faith in me that, when I registered to lobby for The Companies for Demutualization Fairness, a national group trying to protect policyholders in mutual insurance companies, she figured it must be a good cause and that my lobbying was based on valid principles. (It was.)

That's the thing about lobbying: your view of it changes depending upon the purpose or goal of the activity. If you support, say, stricter gun control, the people lobbying for it are your heroes, doing God's work, and the people on the other side are dissemblers at best, devils at worst.

In any event, lobbying is entirely legal, a protected activity under the U.S. Constitution's right to free speech. There's no reason to feel bad when exercising your Constitutional rights.

And if you happen to find yourself employed to advocate for a client before a legislative body, there's no reason to walk around like you have something to hide if the client is legitimate and the action he seeks is sound -- legally, morally and ethically.

Good lawyers do not skulk about courthouses, hoping to escape notice, hoping no one will ask them who they are representing. If lawyers can advocate proudly for their clients, lobbyists can too.

So when Republicans in the Massachusetts House of Representatives recently floated some changes in House ethics rules, one of which would have required lobbyists to wear identifying badges at all times within the State House, my reaction was: Fine. Give me a badge. I'll be glad to wear it.

I'm not sure exactly what would be accomplished by having every lobbyist wear a badge, but I suspect that the badge believers among the Republican cohort think it would do two things:

One, let every legislator and legislative staff person know immediately that the person they are dealing with is a paid advocate for some company, organization or cause, and

Two, let every passerby at the State House know when a lobbyist is buttonholing a legislator or legislative staff person in the lobbies outside the House and Senate chambers or in the hallways of the State House.

If that is so, I have no problem with either result. The more we all know about what's going on at the State House the better. When it comes to hiding things in government, I agree with the late, great senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who declared, "Secrecy is for losers."

I also agree with the conservative newspaper columnist and television commentator Charles Krauthammer, who wrote a good piece about lobbying in Washington, D.C., which appeared in late-February of 2008. The things that Krauthammer finds wrong on the Washington scene, re: federal meddling and usurpation, do not really have a parallel in Massachusetts. His thoughts, nevertheless, are worth pondering. Here's an excerpt from that column:

"Of course it (the First Amendment to the Constitution) doesn't use the word lobby. It calls it the right 'to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.' Lobbyists are people hired to do that for you, so you can remain gainfully employed rather than spend your life in the corridors of Washington.

"To hear the presidential candidates, you'd think lobbying is just one notch below waterboarding, a black art practiced by the great malefactors to loose upon the nation every manner of scourge: oil dependency, greenhouse gases, unpayable mortgages and those tiny entrees you get at French restaurants.

"Lobbying is constitutionally protected, but that doesn't mean we have to like it all. Let's agree to frown upon bad lobbying, such as getting a tax break for a particular industry. Let's agree to welcome good lobbying -- the actual redress of a legitimate grievance -- such as protecting your home from being turned to dust to make way for some urban development.

"There is a defense of even bad lobbying. It goes like this: You wouldn't need to be seeking advantage if Washington had not appropriated for itself all kinds of powers, regulations, intrusions and manipulations (often through the tax code) that had never been imagined by the Founders. What appears to be rent-seeking is this redress of a larger grievance -- federal meddling in what had traditionally been considered an area of free enterprise.

"Good lobbying, on the other hand, requires no such larger contextual explanation. It is a cherished First Amendment right -- necessary, like the others, to protect a free people against overbearing government."

I only ask the House Republicans to grant me one thing before I pose, and pay, for my new lobbyist badge: Please guarantee that it will exempt me from going through the five-minute security scan every time I enter the State House. I'm tired of being pulled aside and having a guard "wand" me all over, while I stand there like an idiot with my arms outstretched, because I forgot to take every penny out of my pockets or remove my wristwatch before going through the metal detector.

So the MBTA Is a Basket Case. Do You Want to Pay More to Fix It?

2011-07-29T10:38:00.000-07:00

As a daily rider on the MBTA, I did not need this week's testimony by T General Manager Richard Davey to convince me I am playing Russian roulette every time I step onto the Orange Line.

"Seventy-two percent of the Red Line cars, built in 1969, and all of the Orange Line cars, built between 1974 and 1981, need replacement now, at a cost in excess of $1 billion," Davey told the legislature's Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Assets as it conducted an oversight hearing Wednesday at the Massachusetts State House.

No one, to my knowledge, gave Davey an argument on this or any other distressing point in his presentation. No one said those rusty, beat-up, breakdown-prone T passenger cars are fine, just fine, and will last another 20 or 30 years, no problem. No one countered Davey's assertion that "constant attention and significant capital dollars" are needed to maintain the reliability and safety of the system, parts of which date to 1897. No one accused him of exaggerating when he said the T has a backlog of "critically needed" state-of-good-repair projects totaling approximately $4.5 billion.

No, everyone basically agrees the T is a financial basket case and something ought to be done about it.

But beyond saying that Uncle Sam should send more federal transportation dollars to Boston, no one agrees what that "something" should be, and when anyone even suggests that our state government should create a new revenue source (tax) for the T, the bullets start flying their way. Immediately.

The same thing happens when anyone says a new revenue source is needed to fix our crumbling roads and bridges, neglected by the state for years because the Big Dig was sucking up every available dollar.

(No one has yet dared to state the obvious: that the state will have spend ridiculous amounts to keep the leaky Tip O'Neill tunnel safe -- or else turn it into a huge water-ride-in-the-dark. Check out recent articles about falling light fixtures.)

"Without a discrete source of pay-as-you-go capital funds, the MBTA will likely be unable to invest the required capital funding, resulting in an increased backlog of state of good repair needs and unacceptable deterioration of the infrastucture critical to providing reliable and frequent service," Davey testified Wednesday

It's pretty clear that the people of Massachusetts don't want to raise the state gasoline tax or impose a vehicle-miles-traveled tax on car owners to bail out the T, repair more roads and bridges than we're already repairing on a yearly basis, or plug those torrents that are undermining the new tunnel that did so much to improve traffic flow and beautify the Hub of New England.

When we finally get beyond The Great Recession hangover, maybe they will grudgingly accept something like that -- and maybe the feds will be able to send us boatloads of new transportation dollars.

Until then, however, something shocking and scary would probably have to happen on the T before the legislature would impose a new transportation tax -- like an ancient, metal-fatigued car falling off the high tracks between Sullivan Square and Community College during the morning rush hour, and taking the rest of the train with it.

If MA Were Facing the Equivalent of a Debt Ceiling Crisis, Our Leaders Would Leap to Solve It

2011-07-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

President Obama addressed the nation last night to drum up support for his position on increasing the debt ceiling and was immediately followed on the air by House Speaker John Boehner.

The two parties remain stuck in their places, far from a compromise, while the time to resolve the issue slips away: the federal government will begin to default on its debt on Tuesday, August 2 if a solution cannot be found.

Reacting to last night's dueling debt ceiling speeches, David Frum, a conservative polemicist and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, tweeted: "If nothing else, we're getting a good real-life poli-sci lesson as to why so few other democracies have adopted U.S. separation of powers idea."

Point well taken.

In a parliamentary system, the head of government, the prime minister, is the head of the party that has a majority in parliament. That majority has no interest in making their own leader look bad, whereas the opposite is the case with Obama and the Republican majority in the U.S. House.

Boehner has Democratic roots way back in Ohio but he seems to be taking his cues from the uber-Republican in Washington, Mitch "Machiavelli" McConnell of Kentucky, leader of the minority in the U.S. Senate, who said from the beginning of the Obama administration that his main job was to make sure Obama was a one-term president.

In a parliamentary system, the majority party knows that if it doesn't solve a national problem as serious and as scary as the debt ceiling, it will lose its majority in the next election and its leader will lose the prime ministership. There's no better incentive for problem-solving in a democracy.

Contrast that with the incentive Republicans have to deprive Obama of anything that looks like a victory on the debt ceiling: the worse he looks, the stronger the entire Republican ticket will be in 2012.

This would all be tremendously entertaining, from the standpoint of political theater, were it not for the fact that a federal default could actually wreck the fragile U.S. economy. This is a genuine catastrophe-in-the-making. We're talking the potential ruination of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of American families.

Here's where I'll put a plug in for good old one-party Massachusetts, the home of the veto-proof Democrats of House and Senate fame, the state that recently rewarded its Democratic governor with a second term.

There are problems, of course, in having one party control both branches of a legislature and the governor's office to boot. But when such a state is confronting a fundamental threat, those problems will not usually include boundless dithering, posturing and cynicism.

When you are the only show in town, you own every problem in town. Voters know your name is on the deed.

Begun in 2008, the Tale of the Misnamed 'Bathroom Bill' Continues on Beacon Hill

2011-07-22T13:36:00.000-07:00

Remember how, back in the spring of 2010, Republican candidate Charlie Baker ignited a controversy by saying he'd veto the "bathroom bill" if he were elected governor and the bill landed on his desk?

Advocates of the legislation, then formally titled An Act Relative to Gender Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes, pounced on Baker for describing it as the bathroom bill, a derogatory term that some in the opposition delighted in using.

Advocates also criticized Baker as being inconsistent and hypocritical because:

One, he had implemented a transgender employee rights policy when he was CEO of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and

Two, he had chosen as his lieutenant governor running mate then Senate Minority Leader Richard Tisei, who happened to be one of the co-sponsors of An Act Relative to Gender Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes.

Throughout the media storm, Baker handled himself well. He stood his ground and explained his position clearly and forcefully, but with an absence of emotion and hyperbole quite befitting an executive.

And he rang up points by asking why, if the bill was so necessary and enjoyed such wide support, (it had 104 co-sponsors in both branches at the time), it had never made it out of the Joint Commitee on the Judiciary since being introduced in 2008?

If legislative leaders really wanted the bill to move, he said, it would have happened by now, effectively turning his tormenters in the direction of the Democratic Party, with its huge majorities in the House and Senate.

Baker, in this instance, was a paragon of both common sense and political skill.

The transgender rights bill died where it was resting at the end of the 2009-10 legislative session, in Judiciary, but was quickly revived when the new session convened in January. It has been retitled An Act Relative to Transgender Equal Right, but has not attracted nearly as many co-sponsors as before.

On June 8, the bill was among a large number of bills heard by the Judiciary committee during proceedings that stretched from mid-afternoon to past 9:00 P.M. in Gardner Auditorium, the largest meeting space in the Massachusetts State House.

Many transgendered men and women spoke eloquently on behalf of the bill. They told heartbreaking stories of how difficult their day-to-day lives were and of the fear, hatred and even violence they'd encountered.

Everyone knows it's hard to be the one who is different, but the testimony of June 8 made it possible for anyone hearing it to understand in a detailed and visceral way the pain, sorrow and deprivation of the transgendered in our society. One could not hear their stories and not be moved.

Of course, there were those who testified against the bill, with their objections centering on the implications for public accommodations, particularly bathrooms and locker rooms. The bill, you see, would extend protections and rights to persons regardless of their gender "identity or expression."

Gender expression is a problem for opponents who fear that someone merely acting on a feeling of being like the opposite gender will enter a bathroom, or a health club or school locker room, reserved for that opposite gender.

Locker rooms are actually a much bigger stumbling block for advocates of An Act Relative to Transgender Equal Rights than bathrooms, for we have had unisex bathrooms in this country for years and bathrooms have stalls, while locker rooms are places where people are naked in front of one another. The idea, say, of a male who is only feeling like a girl or woman one day showing up in a girls' or women's locker room causes most folks to be discomforted.

Advocates retort that three communities in Massachusetts, including Boston, and several other states, have laws on the books protecting persons regardless of their gender identity or gender expression, and that all hell hasn't broken loose in locker rooms there. Fair enough.

It's also fair to say that most transgendered people, whether they have undergone the full physical transformation to their opposite gender or are expressing that opposite gender in other ways, will never cause a problem in a locker room. People can be discrete in locker rooms.

But if you operate a business that has public accommodations, general statements and reassurances -- and even tranquil records in other locales -- will never quite dispel the fear of what one mischief maker, armed with a hungry, aggressive attorney, can do.

Are Thoughts of Warren Keeping Brown Up Nights? Did Baker Make Patrick Tremble?

2011-07-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

Some leaders of the Democratic Party in Massachusetts are already measuring the drapes for Elizabeth Warren's office in a U.S. Senate building in D.C.

But before they get carried away with their dream of Professor Warren toppling Scott "The People's Seat" Brown next year, they might want to consider the wisdom of the late, great Sam Rayburn.

Rayburn was Speaker of the U.S. House back in 1960 when his friend and fellow Texan, Lyndon Johnson, newly nominated for the vice presidency on the ticket with John F. Kennedy, came to him extolling the brain trust around Kennedy.

Rayburn listened for a while about how smart and articulate this or that Kennedy advisor was, and how the Kennedy strategists had devised a brilliant campaign strategy, etc., then interrupted to exclaim:

"Damn it, Lyndon, I'd be a hell of a lot more impressed if one of this bunch had ever run for sheriff."

I mean no disrespect. Elizabeth Warren, daughter of Oklahoma, resident of Cambridge, and tenured professor at Harvard Law, is a huge talent. She was a champion debater in high school, graduated from the University of Houston and Rutgers Law School, and worked as a lawyer on Wall Street before teaching at two Ivy League law schools: the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. She has written scores of scholarly articles, six academic books, and two bestsellers, All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan and The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke.

When President Obama needed someone of stature last fall to head the new U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had been set up to protect people from the kinds of abuses that created the sub-prime-lending monster and led to the world-threatening meltdown of the financial markets in 2008, he turned to Warren. He saw her as a savvy, tough-minded individual who could more than hold her own in the ferocious fights over fiscal policy and regulations that engulf the capital.

Warren served in that role until a few days ago when she had to step aside in favor of Richard Cordray, a former attorney general of Ohio, because the president conceded that Warren would never win Congressional confirmation as bureau director. Too many members of Congress viewed her as consumer-friendly in the extreme. They used, with shameless abandon, the stereotype of the liberal Democrat from the People's Republic of Cambridge against her.

Democratic leaders rightly see Warren's consumer protection bona fides as a plus in a campaign against Brown. But she will need more than that to beat this Massachusetts anomaly -- a down-to-earth, genuinely popular Republican senator who sits where TED used to sit.

The biggest reason not to leap onto the Warren bandwagon is Sam Rayburn's: she's never stood for office, any office. She's never been around the track, so how can anybody say how well she'll run?

She could be great on the trail, a natural. She might prove to be charming and natural in person, and telegenic on the tube, a mini-Streep. She could possess a store of charisma that only a high-stakes campaign could bring out. But we should assume the opposite based on the unfortunate history of talented-but-untested candidates for high office.

Is it just me, or does this Warren groundswell remind you of the straight-from-the-echo-chamber longing for Charlie Baker that gripped Massachusetts Republicans in 2009-10? Then, the conventional GOP view was that someone with Charlie's brain and business record couldn't lose to a muddled liberal like Deval.

The history of big-dreaming-but-doomed political neophytes is long, and we only have to glance back two years for a pertinent exhibit in Massachusetts. Remember Steve Pagliuca, an owner of the Boston Celtics, and Alan Khazei, founder of City Year, two highly accomplished individuals? Martha Coakley, a ballot fixture for years, whipped them in the Democratic Senatorial primary without breaking a sweat.

At this time, I don't think the name Elizabeth Warren is sending a chill up the spine of hoops-shooting, pickup-driving, Bud-drinking Scottie Brown. Voters love the folks who can play the role well. (Right, Sarah Palin, Fred Thompson, Ronald Reagan?) And you've got to admit, so far Brown has nailed the role of senator.

It's Enough to Make a Mittster Scream: Enough Already With All That 'Awkwardness' Talk!

2011-07-15T14:08:00.000-07:00

So many people seem to be saying that Mitt Romney is a dork that I'm actually starting to feel sorry for him.

I picked up the Boston Herald today to find a large photo of a pensive-looking Romney beside a headline that shouted, "Get a Clue, Mitt!" Below that was a helpful sub-head that said, "Awkwardness on campaign trail could sink Romney, pundits say."

The story inside the paper recounted a series of socially awkward moments for Romney on the presidential campaign trail, including the occasion when he pretended a waitress was pinching his butt while they were having their photo taken.

Can the time be far off when Mitt will ask little kids to pull his index finger when he feels a fart coming on?

Seriously folks, is it really important that a candidate for President of the United States of America, male or female, be a regular guy?

Shouldn't a presidential race be more about substance than style, or the lack of it?

Shouldn't Romney's record as the savior of the Salt Lake Olympics and the father of universal health care in Massachusetts mean more to the voters than his fatal attraction to bad puns?

Shouldn't we care more about Romney's obvious intelligence and integrity than his inability to handle a one-liner?

Of course, it should!

So what if he can't tell a joke that his own employees can honestly laugh at?

But until human beings stop using emotions and instincts to make judgments about other people, awkwardness on the campaign trail will be a killer.

In other words, Romney would be better off waiting to run for president until the primate brain of human beings is rewired by mandatorily-consumed pharmaceuticals that do not yet exist.

(With the genes for longevity that so many members of the Church of Latter Day Saints are known for, this advice may not be as far-fetched as it seems.)

When Romney was governor, there were two occasions when I happened to see him walking around the Massachusetts State House. Both times he was surrounded by a phalanx of aides and security men.

Behind that cordon, he looked almost shy and tentative, and I had to sympathize with his seeming nervousness about the possibility of bumping into someone who might want a spontaneous conversation with the governor, or, God forbid, a favor.

At the same time, these scenes elicited tiny bursts of resentment along the lines of, "There goes Mr. Perfect in his bubble! Who does he think he is?"

Don't get me wrong. Romney is good. He's tall, handsome, smarter than 99% of the population, a self-made millionaire, a doting husband, father and grandfather, and a sincerely devoted member of the Mormon faith...And that fabulous head of hair! Oh, I'd kill for that.

I don't mind Romney feeling good about himself. He's entitled to self-esteem. And I wouldn't ever have minded him striding around the State House like he owned the place because, on a basic level, he did.

But if he wanted to make the right emotional impression, and if he knew how to do it the way some politicians naturally do, he'd have strode the halls alone, like John Wayne walking into a saloon like he feared no man.

No doubt there is a real guy in there somewhere. It's just that average folks don't see it.

If Romney can drop The Perfect Son routine, if he can shed the Mormon Man of Destiny self-consciousness, and get in touch with that real guy, he could win the Republican nomination and become a legitimate threat to Obama in November, 2012.

He has time enough to do it, and money enough to hire the best (and the most discrete) acting coaches to guide him in this transformation. May the spirit of Ronald Reagan be upon him!

This is one primate, however, who thinks Mitt has been behind the phalanx too long to pull it off.

Joe Kennedy Makes a Wake-Up Call to the Powers That Be at JFK Library

2011-07-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

Somewhere the ghost of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., the founding father of the Kennedy dynasty, is smiling.

Old Joe was as tough and driven as they come. He had to succeed, in business and in politics. He had to win.

And he hammered that competitive spirit into his children. Second place was never good enough. He wouldn't pat his kids on the head when they lost and say, "It's OK, you did your best."

That's why he'd understand what his grandson and namesake, Joseph P. Kennedy, II, is up to now.

In a story that broke today in the New York Times, ("Family of Robert F. Kennedy Rethinks His Place at Library"), Young Joe went public with his family's disappointment that the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston has not done enough to honor the legacy of his late father, Robert F. Kennedy.

Apparently, the family of RFK has felt for a long time that the man and his deeds have not been properly recognized at the JFK Library, as they have refused to sign the final documents handing RFK's papers over to the library.

Now, with plans barreling forward to construct the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate on a parcel adjoining the library, those qualms have worsened. Listen to what Joe Kennedy, a former Congressman and now head of Citizens Energy Corp., told the New York Times:

"There is a very large building, and there is a remembrance of President Kennedy and there's one for Senator Edward Kennedy. But there is nothing out there (the JFK Library) for Robert Kennedy."

Hints were dropped that RFK's widow, Ethel, and children could remove his papers from the JFK Library and place them with another institution that would give them their due -- although Kennedy emphasized that the family's "ultimate hope and desire" is to have them housed permanently at the library.

So you can chalk this up to the family wanting to make a wake-up call to the library's board and management. Petulant?

I don't think so.

Bobby Kennedy managed his brother John's campaign for President in 1960 and was the pivotal figure, as Attorney General, in his administration. In 1964, he got himself elected Senator from New York, no mean feat, and was well on his way to the Democratic nomination for President in 1968 when he was killed the night he won the California primary. He was only 42 years old.

Forty-three years have passed since RFK's death. He is fading a bit, as almost all historical figures do. If he were my father, I'd be fighting for his place in the spotlight of history, too.

Many years ago, I heard a story of how President Kennedy expressed some initial reluctance when his father discussed with him the likelihood that his brother Ted would seek the President's former Senate seat in Massachusetts in 1962.

"Is that really a good idea?" the President supposedly asked, worried that the public would balk at another Kennedy in politics

The father brushed aside his doubts.

"You got yours," he basically said. "Now Ted's going to get his."

That's not the kind of man who would have been bothered by a squabble at the JFK Library.

Careful What You Wish For! Rep Could Have This Court Job for Decades

2011-07-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

State Representative Christopher Speranzo, an up and coming Democrat from western Massachusetts, is trading the State House for the Court House.

Gov. Deval Patrick nominated Rep. Speranzo several weeks ago for the vacant clerk magistrate position at the Central Berkshire District Court in the legislator's hometown of Pittsfield, and the Governor's Council confirmed the appointment on an unusually tight 5-4 vote this past Wednesday.

Speranzo almost didn't make it. Half of the eight-member Council opposed the nomination and he collected the vote needed for victory only because Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray relinquished the Council chair to break the tie, as allowed by Council rules.

Knowing Speranzo as a bright and affable young man, (he's 38), and as a well regarded legislator on the leadership track, I was surprised by how vehemently some councilors opposed him.

For example, Mary-Ellen Manning, a fellow Democrat, ripped him for running for re-election last fall and not disclosing that his application for clerk magistrate was pending. As quoted by the State House News Service, Manning told Speranzo at his June 22 confirmation hearing, "You stole their votes. That's what you did. Nobody thinks it's offensive here to be a public servant. Anybody who uses public service and the cloak of public service for their own private gain, I do think is offensive. It was offensive to the voters."

Did Ms. Manning never hear the axiom: You don't quit one job until you have another.

Speranzo's real problem, Councilor Jennie Caissie suggested, is "a glaring lack of experience." She did a full Judge Judy on him, fuming: "In your entire professional career, you've basically been a public employee. You've never received a paycheck that hasn't come from the taxpayers of Massachusetts." (Before entering the legislature, Speranzo served as an assistant attorney general and as Pittsfield's city solicitor.)

That Caissie's hard to impress.

Speranzo graduated from Boston College and Boston College Law School, and holds a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Cambridge, England. He's only been in the legislature since 2005, when he succeeded Peter Larkin in a special election, and already he's the vice chair of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary. Currently, he's also a member of the Joint Committee on Ways and Means, the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight, and the Special Committee on Redistricting.

Would Caissie have been happier if Speranzo worked nights as a cashier in a parking garage?

But don't feel bad for new Clerk Magistrate Speranzo. He just landed a lifetime appointment to a job that pays $110,000 a year, with health benefits and a pension. The pain of the public spanking he took at the State House on June 22 is quickly fading.

Most of us, and we can definitely put most Governor's Councilors in the "us" category, wonder how we could get a deal like that. How can we, too, go to heaven without dying?

Nevertheless, I suspect that the day will come when Speranzo the Philosopher, the man who never broke his stride in seven years at B.C., is presiding at yet another hearing on yet another totally-insignficant-but-incredibly-nasty dispute or complaint, and wonders if it was really such a good thing that Tim Murray broke the tie on July 6, 2011.

In Death Match with McConnell and Boehner, Obama Calls in the Massachusetts Cavalry

2011-07-05T14:34:00.000-07:00

Anyone interested in a sneak preview of President Obama's re-election platform should check out the opinion piece by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick in The Washington Post this past Sunday: "How Grover Norquist Hypnotized the GOP," 6/30/11, http:www.washingtonpost.com/how-grover-norquist-hypnotized-the-gop/2011/06/30/AGY...

Norquist and Patrick were in the same class at Harvard, but these two have never been on the same planet politically. Patrick is kind of a classic New Deal liberal Democrat while Norquist is a conservative (some would say ultra-conservative) Ronald Reagan Republican.

Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), which bills itself as a "coalition of taxpayer groups, individuals and businesses opposed to higher taxes at the federal, state and local levels." For more information, go to: http://www/atr/org/print

Norquist's calling card is the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge," a document the ATR asks all candidates for state and federal offices to sign, committing themselves to opposing all tax increases -- anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances.

Obama is now locked in mortal combat with Republicans in Congress over raising the federal debt ceiling. A high-stakes battle of nerves and will that could well decide Obama's political future, the dispute boils down to:

Obama wants to cut two trillion dollars from the federal budget and raise taxes by one trillion on oil companies and the wealthiest Americans in exchange for Republican support for increasing the debt limit; Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell in the Senate and John Boehner in the House, are refusing to accept the tax increase part of the deal. If the two sides cannot reach a compromise in about three weeks, our government will begin to default on the national debt, with all sorts of nasty and potentially nightmarish consequences for our economy.

It is not surprising that Obama would turn to Deval Patrick at such a critical juncture, and not just because Patrick is his friend. The better reason for Obama to call in the Massachusetts cavalry is that Patrick has already survived his near-death experience with budget-cutting, tax-hating, public-jobs-eliminating Republicans.

Remember last summer when a lot of smart people thought Charlie Baker was going to clean Patrick's clock?

Remember how Patrick defied the skeptics and won re-election by skillfully concocting and delivering a centrist message that basically said government has an obligation to help people, that it is difficult but necessary to carefully balance the many demands upon the public purse, that getting through tough economic times required mutual sacrifice, and that the worst recession since the Great Depression was no time to take a meat axe to government services and jobs on the public payroll.

Patrick's "we're-all-in-this-together" message of 2010 will be Obama's message of 2012. With the economy doing just OK and unemployment still above 9%, the President really has no other option. If Obama can deliver it with as much sincerity and empathy and eloquence as Patrick did, the President stands an excellent chance of winning a second term.

See what you think of what Obama had to say, through Patrick, in The Washington Post the other day:

"It is now clear that the Republican strategy is to drive America to the brink of fiscal ruin and then argue that the only way out is to cut spending for the powerless. Taxes -- a dirty word thanks to Norquist's 'no new taxes' gimmick -- are made to seem beyond the pale, even as the burden of paying for our society shifts disproportionately to the middle class and working poor. It is the height of fiscal folly. It is also not who we are as a country.

"For nearly a decade, our federal government paid for two wars and a costly prescription drug benefit with borrowed money. Our government paid for the Bush tax cuts with borrowed money. Now, after exhausting the budget surplus left by the Clinton administration, the only spending Republicans are willing to discuss cutting is spending that helps the poor and vulnerable -- meaning anything that does not touch the interests of large corporations and the very rich. Last December, Republican hard-liners held hostage benefits for people out of work in exchange for an agreement to extend the Bush tax cuts for those who make a million dollars or more a year. Last month, many of the same lawmakers rallied to protect special tax benefits for oil companies that have made record profits on high gas prices.

"Meanwhile, some mom-and-pop stores and college students pay more in taxes than some of our large corporations. Still, taxes are sin to hard-liners, though they have difficulty demonstrating a correlation over the past decade between tax cuts and economic growth.

"Everyone knows that we have to reduce the deficit. Everyone also knows that reducing government spending and addressing revenue shortfalls have to be part of the plan. This isn't partisan; it's pragmatic. Some might even call it conservative. But Norquist and the rest of the radical right have so hypnotized the Republican leadership that they can't come out and say it. For them, maintaining their rhetoric about spending cuts is more important than preserving the civic investments that make America stand out from the rest of the world."

That last line -- "preserving civic investments that make America stand out from the rest of the world" -- had its antecedent in Patrick's re-election pitch about Massachusetts leading the nation in public education, investment in scientific research, environmental protection, etc.

It worked for the Democrats in Massachusetts last year. It can work for them in enough other states next year.

Best Things in Life Are Free, Like This Program on Senator Sumner

2011-07-01T12:28:00.000-07:00

Since the Pilgrims landed here in 1620, Massachusetts has produced more than its share of political giants. I would argue that none of them stood taller than Charles Sumner, who served in the U.S. Senate from 1851 to 1874.

Born on Beacon Hill (Irving Street) on January 6, 1811, Sumner graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School, then traveled widely and studied in Europe. He became fluent in French and attended lectures at the Sorbonne in Paris. One day, there were two or three black students in the lecture hall, which struck him as strange, as he was accustomed to the harsh racial divisions of America. Even stranger to Sumner was the non-reaction of the other students.

Sumner noted later in his diary that the black students "were standing in the midst of a knot of young men and their color seemed to be no objection to them. I was glad to see this, though with American impressions, it seemed very strange."

Upon his return to America in 1840, Sumner practiced law, taught at his alma mater, wrote articles for law journals, and became active in the public life of the Commonwealth. A natural orator, he spoke frequently at lyceums and became known for his strong anti-slavery views and his opposition to the Mexican-American War.

In 1851, the members of the Massachusetts legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate. That was how senators were chosen in those days. He soon became one of the most effective and unrelenting opponents of slavery on the national scene. He repeatedly attacked, for example, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which allowed slavery to creep into those territories.

Sumner's passionate advocacy of abolition led to a violent incident on the floor of the Senate, a crime that shocked the population of the north, fueled the anti-slavery movement, and helped set the stage for the Civil War. If people remember Sumner today, it is usually because of what happened on May 22, 1856, when U.S. Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina attacked Sumner with a cane and beat him so badly that it took Sumner three years to regain sufficient strength to return to public life. (Brooks was enraged by comments Sumner had made two days earlier about one of the Senate sponsors of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina, who happened to be Brooks's uncle.)

While Sumner was recovering, the legislature re-elected him, even though he was unable to go to Washington, because it believed his empty chair in the Senate chamber would serve as an eloquent reminder of the importance of free speech and resistance to slavery.

When Sumner was finally able to resume his duties, he picked up where he had left off in his ferocious opposition to slavery. This remark, addressed to an opponent during a debate in 1860, was typical of the man:

"Say, sir, in your madness, that you own the sun, the stars, the moon; but do not say that you own a man, endowed with a soul that shall live immortal, when sun and moon and stars have passed away."

Needless to say, Senator Sumner became a key supporter of President Abraham Lincoln, urging him early in the Civil War to emancipate the slaves, a course Lincoln eventually took, with beneficial results for the northern cause.

On Wednesday, July 6, at 11:00 A.M., the Museum of African American History of Boston and Nantucket will offer a special free program on Sumner entitled, A Lighthouse Among the Lampposts: Charles Sumner's Beacon Hill.

The museum offers a regular Black History tour of Beacon Hill, but the July 6 program is an altogether new tour for the purpose of exploring the "humble roots" of Charles Sumner on Beacon Hill and his "pioneering civil rights work." It has been created in celebration of the bicentennial of Sumner's birth.

Everyone who has the time to do so should experience Charles Sumner's Beacon Hill. For more information, visit http://www.boaf.gov/

Sumner died in Washington on March 11, 1874, while still in the Senate. At the time of his death, he was championing the passage of a civil rights bill to help and protect every African American. Frederick Douglas came to visit him on his deathbed; Sumner told him, "My bill, my bill...Don't let my Civil Rights Bill fail."

Sumner's body was returned to Boston and his casket lay in state at the Massachusetts State House. Veterans of the famed 54th Massachusetts regiment, Robert Gould Shaw's unit of African American soldiers, formed an honor guard as 50,000 people came to pay their respects. A shield with the motto, "Don't Let My Civil Rights Bill Fail," rested atop the casket.

In a ceremony at the State House, the head of the delegation that brought Sumner's body home addressed the Governor as follows:

"May it please your Excellency, we are commanded to render back to you your illustrious dead...With reverent hands we bring to you his mortal part that it may be committed back to the soil of the renowned Commonwealth, which gave him birth. Take it; it is yours. The part which we do not return to you is not wholly yours to receive, nor altogether ours to give. It belongs to the country, to mankind, to freedom, to civilization, to humanity."

That was Charles Sumner, a lighthouse among the lampposts.

The Time Will Come When 'Social Cohesion' Gets Into the Universal Health Care Equation

2011-06-30T08:26:00.000-07:00

"A trend will continue until it cannot."

I wish I'd come up with that but I did not. It's an adage that's been around for years, heard most frequently in the context of economics.

"A trend will continue until it cannot."

It sounds like something uttered by a Zen monk, but that's not why I like it.

Its true appeal, and its descriptive utility, comes, I believe, from its implied message of finality and woe.

It's kind of like a doctor telling an alcoholic, "Don't worry, that stuff won't kill you until it does."

Thoughts of "uncontinuable" trends were rampant this week in Boston as the Division of Health Care Finance and Policy conducted hearings on how Massachusetts can contain the ever-rising cost of health care and thereby preserve its first-in-the-nation system of universal health coverage, now five years old.

According to testimony given the other day by Massachusetts Secretary of Administration and Finance Jay Gonzalez, health care spending will consume half of the entire state budget by 2020 if current trends continue. Half!

That prediction made me think of how Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist, describes the U.S. government: "A giant insurance company that also has an army."

If Secretary Gonzalez's prediction comes true, Massachusetts in 2020 will be a giant insurance company that also has state troopers.

Health care costs that keep growing at five times the inflation rate literally eat other government programs alive.

Looking at the recession-fueled jump in the number of residents enrolled in Medicaid, the State House News Service observed, "The trends point toward an entitlement program with runaway costs that's devouring new state revenues and leaving other services in areas like public safety, human services, education and local aid subject to continuing budget cuts amid a sluggish economic recovery and dried-up federal revenue sources." (That was from a 12/13/10 article headlined, "Medicaid Costs Surge Past $10 Billion, Devouring Uptick in Tax Receipts.")

Massachusetts today finds itself in a health care financing crisis. Thus, we can expect our state government to make changes it would not even consider in gentler times, and to move in directions it would rather not go. That's what crises force you to do.

So what kind of changes might Massachusetts be compelled to make?

I'm no seer, but I can see the day when everyone on Medicaid has to obtain primary care at state-run clinics staffed by nurse practitioners, and when most members of the middle class are restricted to lower-cost care providers and networks, and are discouraged from seeking advanced diagnostic testing by financial penalties and disincentives.

In other words, it could be a bare bones health care future for most of us.

Of course, that would lead to serious problems in our society. The poor and the working class would see the affluent getting better care, and more health care services, and they would burn with resentment. They'd look upon government as the enemy of their children and grandchildren. Social divisions would widen. Class resentments would spread like viruses to places they hadn't been seen since the Great Depression.

At that point, the Governor of Massachusetts would have no choice but to step forward and promise to fix this horrible mess. He or she would vow to create a new system based on equal access to state-of-the-art health care. No slack would be given to any vested interest in our huge insurance-medical-hospital complex.

The Governor would emphasize the extreme difficulty of this noble task and ask for universal sacrifices -- everyone giving something up or paying some price -- to correct and resurrect the Massachusetts system of universal care.

And the Governor would base this historic struggle on the social cohesion that would result from an equitable system of universal care, which is what President Obama should have done when reforming health care in 2009.

State Budget Considerations Become Agonizingly Real When the Subject Is Mental Health

2011-06-27T13:59:00.000-07:00

The case of the late Stephanie Moulton stands as a rebuke to anyone who believes the state's mental health budget can be cut further than it already has been over the past few years.

A woman of compassion and uncompromising ideals, Stephanie went to work as a counselor at a group home for mental patients in Revere and was brutally murdered by one of her clients on January 20, 2011.

Small of stature and only 25 years old, Stephanie was working alone that day at the home when she was attacked for no reason by a schizophrenic male resident with a history of violence. Her attacker was much bigger and stronger than Stephanie; she didn't have a prayer when he went into a murderous rage.

How Stephanie came to be alone in that house with a severely disturbed 27-year-old man was not an accident, nor was it a quirk of scheduling or staffing. Rather, it was the direct result of a state policy to reduce beds at in-patient facilities for the mentally ill and to restrict funding for out-patient care to the point that the lowest-paid workers are frequently the sole care-givers.

The New York Times recently published an expose on this situation, "A Schizophrenic, a Slain Worker, Troubling Questions," (6/16/11), which may be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/us/17MENTAL.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print

Vicker V. DiGravio, III, chief executive of the Association for Behavioral Healthcare, was quoted as saying, "The outpatient treatment system in Massachusetts is dying on the vine."

The Times amplified that as follows:

"Providers have trouble finding psychiatrists and other clinicians who are willing to work in the community; they depend on recent social work graduates, who usually move on quickly to better-paying jobs at hospitals or in private practice. They also have difficulty recruiting and retaining quality workers for group homes, and many hired do not even have the college degree that Ms. Moulton possessed."

According to Mr. DiGravio, "The end result is a system where the folks with the least experience are serving the clients with the most intensive needs -- because the Department of Mental Health serves only those people with the most severe mental illness."

Last week there came a report that state tax collections during the first half of this month were 9.3% higher than the comparable period in 2010, news that prompted some at the Massachusetts State House to start talking about tax cuts.

"...it makes it much harder to argue that we should increase what are already unacceptably high tax rates when you have a significant increase in revenue," said one state senator.

I don't know if Stephanie Moulton's mother, Kimberly Flynn, will be at the State House when the legislature next debates tax cuts. But I hope she will be there, speaking up for the people like her daughter who do not hesitate to serve on the front lines of our mental health care system, to fight the good fight for the rest of us.

In the meantime, perhaps it would be good if the following words of Mrs. Flynn were copied and pasted into a few computer files at the State House. This was Mrs. Flynn's final lament to the reporter who wrote that excellent New York Times article, Deborah Sontag:

"Stephanie should be here now, planning her wedding and rolling her eyes at me like she always does. It was totally unnecessary for her to get killed and murdered on the job when all she was trying to do was help people."

Heavy Hitters Want a Supersized Convention Center, But They Have to Get Past Widmer First

2011-06-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

All but three of the 27 members of an advisory panel studying a possible $2 billion expansion of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC) endorsed the idea yesterday.

This is a very ambitious plan and it cannot pay for itself up front.

The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, which runs the BCEC in South Boston and the Hynes Convention Center in the Back Bay section of Boston, therefore has no choice but to look for public dollars (tax and fee increases) to make it happen.

There's precedence for this, of course: the original construction of the BCEC was funded through new hotel taxes and fees on taxi cabs, rental cars and tour buses.

Before the BCEC expansion can go forward, the City of Boston, the Massachusetts legislature and Gov. Deval Patrick all must bless it.

Boston Mayor Tom Menino definitely supports it and the governor's staff is making noises indicating that Patrick will embrace it, too.

You could probably mark this down as a sure thing were it not for one man: Michael J. Widmer, President of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, http://www.masstaxpayers.org/

Although Widmer has never held elective office, he served with distinction in the administrations of Gov. Frank Sargent, a Republican, and Gov. Michael Dukakis, a Democrat, and has gained nearly oracular status in his two decades at the helm of the MTF, which bills itself as "the independent resource for the Commonwealth's decision makers."

Widmer got his reputation for integrity, independence and candor the old fashioned way: he earned it.

He knows, and is known by, everyone in state government. And everyone who knows him will tell you that, one, he's very smart, and, two, he never shades the truth for anyone.

So when Mike Widmer, a member of the advisory Convention Center Partnership that voted 24-3 yesterday to recommend the BCEC expansion, says, "I'm yet to be persuaded that the benefits of this project merit the large public expenditures that would be required," the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority has a problem.

Oh, by the way, the other two votes against the proposal were cast by Sonia Chang-Diaz, the state senator for the South End district adjoining South Boston, and Samuel Tyler, director of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a formally established fiscal watchdog within the apparatus of city government.

Higher hotel taxes and higher fees on other aspects of the tourist trade will be no easy sell in this legislature, which has for three years now resisted calls for higher taxes to address Great Recession-related deficits.

Interestingly, the Convention Center Authority is pushing expansion at a time when the number of conventioneers coming to Massachusetts is dropping. Since the recession started in 2008, the number of visitors to the BCEC and the Hynes declined 26%, from 870,000 per year to 645,000.

Wouldn't the Authority be better off waiting until the tide has turned on those numbers before asking the millions of tourists who visit here every year to pay for a bigger playpen in South Boston?

Defending the Special Joint Committee on Redistricting Will Not Be Done on the Cheap

2011-06-21T08:40:00.000-07:00

The Special Joint Committee on Redistricting is now conducting hearings to give citizens in different parts of the state the opportunity to have their say on how Congressional districts should be redrawn when Massachusetts loses one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives next year.

"It's essentially a 'Survivor' series and one congressman is going to get voted off the island," says Massachusetts House Minority Leader Brad Jones, R-North Reading.

We now have 11 Congressmen; next year we'll have 10.

The task of the Special Joint Committee on Redistricting would be made much easier if one of the sitting Congressman, say John Olver, who qualified for Medicare long ago, or John Tierney, who was badly wounded by his wife's money-laundering conviction, would volunteer to turn his summer recess into a permanent one, but that's not likely to happen.

Thus, in at least one area of the state, two incumbent Democrats who have been friends and colleagues for years will have to go into the redistricting cage for a Texas death match. It won't be pretty.

But the sorriest aspect of redistricting, which is required after every federal census at the start of a new decade, could well be the cost to the taxpayers of Massachusetts, who will have to pay to defend the work of the Special Joint Committee on Redistricting against the inevitable lawsuits by parties who feel aggrieved by the process.

If one former longtime member of the Massachusetts House has it right, that cost could total in the high seven figures!

"Just look at the record," said this ex-lawmaker, who was never known as an alarmist during his chairmanship of the Taxation Committee. "In 1991, the state spent maybe $30,000 addressing the legal fall-out from redistricting. In 2001, that figure jumped to $2,000,000. I will not be surprised if the redistricting defense costs to the state this year and next reach $6,000,000."

One of the big reasons this former legislator, and many others, anticipate legal challenges to the work of the redistricting committee is the push coming from many quarters, including stalwarts of the Republican Party, to create a minority-majority district in Greater Boston.

Redrawing the Congressional lines in the state capital to accommodate this desire would mean that some longtime incumbents (Hello, Mike Capuano and Steve Lynch!) would lose reliable parts of their districts in Boston. Many political observers don't believe the special committee will have the stomach for that.

Indeed, the chairman of the special committee, Stan Rosenberg, Amherst's state senator, is on record as basically saying that a nicely shaped, geographically sensible district is not a priority for those who have to redraw the Congressional lines.

The MetroWest Daily News quoted Rosenberg in May as asserting, "Shape is irrelevant. What really counts is that we can elect someone who can meet our needs and is reflective of our needs."

The conventional wisdom is that the map of a district decides the result of an election there, but not everyone buys that.

For example, Tim Storey, a senior fellow and redistricting expert at the National Conference of State Legislatures, believes that district lines are important in determining who wins the first post-redistricting election but are not the ultimate determinant.

"Redistricting does not determine elections; other things have a big impact on elections," Storey flatly told the MetroWest Daily News.

As the special committee conducts its hearings around the state, it can count on the sitting Congressman in each district to show up and argue eloquently for the preservation of that district in more or less its current shape and scope.

Their speeches all boil down to: This situation cries out for tweaking, not bold action!

Ed Markey was at the committee hearing in Framingham last week, for example, urging its members to protect the integrity of his district, which includes Framingham, Natick and Wayland.

If he didn't, the folks out there would think he didn't love them. And Markey hasn't managed to stay in the Congress since 1976, where he now ranks ninth in seniority, by appearing indifferent to his constituents.

Inside Bulfinch's Masterpiece, the Massachusetts State House, an Office Building Pulses with Life

2011-06-17T13:16:00.000-07:00

Beacon Hill was buzzing this week and last after word got out that the Speaker of the House was looking into an after-hours incident in the House chamber involving a young, single state representative and a female aide to another representative.

Supposedly, late on the night of April 28, after the House had wrapped up work on the new state budget, a security officer came upon the legislator and the aide, both of whom are in their twenties, in the deserted House chamber.

The chamber was locked at the time, but the pair apparently entered through a door in the Speaker's adjoining office, where a post-session, social gathering was underway.

How the incident (if it can be called that) came to light is not known outside the State House, but once it became general knowledge in the building, it inevitably seeped into the public realm. Before you knew it, tongues were wagging all over Boston.

And once the reporters started calling late last week, Speaker Robert DeLeo had no choice but to look into the matter and report publicly on what he found.

Tuesday of this week, DeLeo released a statement that his investigation had concluded that the rep and the aide had not violated any law, House rule, or House personnel policy, "and, most importantly, that there was no inappropriate behavior" by either party.

In the statement, DeLeo emphasized the unique place that the House chamber occupies in the affairs of the Commonwealth and made it clear that he expects legislators to act in a manner always befitting the history and grandeur of their surroundings.

"The House chamber belongs to the people of Massachusetts," he said. "It is a place where we make laws and conduct the people's business. It is a place where important occasions and addresses are marked by ceremony, and its traditions span much of the Bay State's history...as a matter of policy, the chamber should be reserved for official business and ceremony only."

One reason to envy members of the legislature, I have always felt, is that they get to work in the Massachusetts State House, a magnificent structure designed by Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844), a protege of Thomas Jefferson, the father of American architecture.

No matter how many times you've walked into the State House, you can't help but be impressed by its classical beauty, its perfect dimensions, and its overshadowing dignity whenever you come through the door and stride its portrait-bedecked hallways. It has the power literally to stop your thoughts or to change your mood.

The State House is drenched in history, but it is not frozen in time. You experience it simultaneously as you would a museum, an art gallery, a shrine, and an office building -- a building that shows a lot of wear in places and that has many more small and non-descript offices for back-benchers than palatial digs for committee chairmen.

Hundreds of people go to work at the State House every day and they do what people everywhere do at work. They eat their lunches at messy desks. They telephone their spouses and try to keep their voices low. They misplace things in file cabinets, which just happen to be pressed against ornate, ancient fireplaces.

This very combination of the incredibly special and the terribly ordinary gives the State House its unquestionable charisma. It has expanded in stages since the cornerstone was laid for Bulfinch's original structure on July 4, 1795, by Governor Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, and it could never be duplicated.

You have to feel bad for that rep who became tabloid fodder and the object of an official investigation after being caught in the House chamber with a woman late at night. He was only doing what young people have always done after a lot of work and a little partying. Others have certainly stretched the bounds of acceptable behavior at the State House in greater ways through the years. Many others.

There was, for example, a trio of legislators, all fairly new to the House, who made their way to "the lantern" atop the building's golden dome on a July 4th night in the late-1970s.

Carrying a six-pack of beer, they moved stealthily to the fifth floor, made their way through the dark to a restricted area, ascended stairs as narrow and steep as a ladder, crawled over the wooden framework of the dome, forced open a hatch, and shimmied into the lantern. From that marvelous perch, they drank and enjoyed the fireworks shooting high into the sky above the Charles River Esplanade.

Security was lax at the State House in those days; these guys were never discovered, never reprimanded.

The very existence of "acceptable behavior" challenges humans to misbehave. Standards and expectations create a tension that often lends excitement, irresistibly so, to a prohibited act. Mr. Bulfinch lived in Paris when he was young and acquiring his wondrous skills, so he would no doubt understand such things. I do not think he would be offended by a kiss in the House chamber or a beer toast atop his iconic dome.

If There's a Downside to a Politician Being a Hockey Fan, I Haven't Seen It

2011-06-13T15:42:00.001-07:00

Roars at a touchdown
slums near the harbors
liquor for the poor
uphold the State.

from "Three Talks on Civilization"
by Czeslaw Milosz

If I were a genuine, longtime hockey fan, and if I held a statewide office in Massachusetts, or were running for such an office, there is only one place I'd be tonight: the TD Garden, where the Boston Bruins will be playing the Vancouver Canucks in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals.

Sports have always been a good way for politicians to connect with the voters. Just ask our state's junior U.S. senator, Scott Brown, who was reportedly known as "Downtown Scotty Brown" during his basketball playing days at Tufts.

Remember how Brown campaigned so effectively outside Fenway Park during the "Winter Classic" National Hockey League game there? And do you remember how things seemed to go downhill for his opponent, Martha Coakley, when it sounded later like she was dismissing the importance of campaigning at sporting events -- and coming across at the same time like she couldn't take the cold?

It was probably unfair to Coakley, who grew up in North Adams and never puts on airs, but such are the perilous snapshots one stumbles into when campaigning.

Although I can barely stand up on skates and my knowledge of the sport is thinner than a Zamboni's water trail, I have long believed that hockey is the ideal sport for a politician in our part of America to be perceived as a fan of.

Pound for pound, hockey players are at once the toughest, most skilled, least narcissistic and lowest compensated professional athletes. Average people like and respect and identify with hockey players. Average people also relate to hockey players in ways they never will with the millionaire specialists who play baseball, basketball, football and (God forbid) golf for a living.

So here's my recommendation to young office holders who desire a career in politics and dream of bigger things:

Get season tickets to the Bruins and go to as many games as possible. The tickets will put a big bite in your wallet every year and the games will use up a lot of your time, but eventually you'll become associated with the game of working class heroes in the public's mind. Voters will then tend to believe you possess virtues in common with hockey players and to reward you accordingly.

If nothing else, the experience will have been worth it if it confers an understanding of what constitutes a beating. A mugging in the media is easier to take than a pounding on the ice.

STANLEY CUP SIDELIGHT: I have a friend who works in an industry with a lot of blue collar, unionized workers and his company has four season tickets to the Bruins. Last Wednesday, the company hosted some 40 of its employees at a pre-game dinner in the North End of Boston. Then they put everyone's name in a hat, drew three names and gave the winners tickets to Game 4. "Why didn't you raffle off all four tickets?" I inquired. "Because," my friend said, "we had to have one of the bosses go with the three winners to the game. Otherwise, those guys would have scalped the tickets and gone home with the dough. Do you have any idea what those tickets were going for on the sidewalk? Our guys love hockey, but they're not stupid."

When Covering Accusations and Exonerations, the Media Often Has Two Different Speeds

2011-06-09T06:18:00.000-07:00

Almost three months ago, the Boston Globe published an article on the first page of its Metro section on the forced resignation of Michael Festa, president of the Carroll Center for the Blind, Newton, ("Board ousts Carroll Center for the Blind's president," 3/18/11).

The article said Festa, a former state rep from Melrose and Gov. Deval Patrick's first Secretary of Elder Affairs, had been "abruptly forced out" during an emergency meeting of the center's board of directors two nights before "amid issues about his performance and an internal investigation into whether he harassed a visually-impaired female employee..."

All the damaging information in the report came from two unidentified, nebulous "officials," who talked to the Globe "only on the condition of anonymity because it involved a personnel matter..."

According to the Globe, the nameless duo "...said that an outside lawyer was hired to investigate concerns over inappropriate behavior by Festa and that the lawyer made a roughly 90-minute presentation to the board," which "focused on two incidents, both of which involved Festa touching female workers, the officials said. The first was allegedly at a school holiday party in December, and the second involved a witness seeing Festa embrace the visually-impaired worker in the basement of the school, the officials said."

The harassment claim caught Festa by surprise. He was quoted in the 3/18/11 Globe as saying, "That's totally out of the blue. I can assure you on my father's grave I've never heard any of that."

When contacted later by a Melrose publication, Festa emphatically denied harassing anyone at the Carroll Center. "I agreed to resign -- not having any knowledge when I gave that statement, and sent that letter of resignation by email -- that any discussion about harassment had occurred at that (board) meeting," he told "Wicked Local Melrose," the online arm of the Melrose Free Press. "Anything that had to do with harassment of any kind I totally dispute...(the allegations of harassment) are baseless, and the human resources director (at the Carroll Center) has assured me that she has never heard any such allegations from any employee."

He added: "I am going to vigorously contest, and deal with, what I consider to be a very slanderous and terrible way I've been treated."

On May 18, the Carroll Center released the following statement:

"On March 18, 2011, the Boston Globe published an article concerning the March 17, 2011 resignation of Michael Festa as president of the Carroll Center for the Blind that included inaccurate and misleading statements regarding certain deliberations of our Board of Directors on March 16, 2011. The Carroll Center and its Board of Directors deplore the unauthorized disclosure regarding the Board meeting made by at least one of our Board members.

"Most importantly, the article did not fairly describe the Board's deliberations of March 16 regarding a report made to the Board during only one portion of the meeting. As a result the article was very unfair to Mike Festa in that it presented a distorted picture of the various considerations that led the Board to request his resignation.

"In particular, the Board wishes to make clear that no employee or service provider to the Carroll Center, or any other person, has complained that Mr. Festa subjected them to any unwanted or inappropriate contact or harassment. No finding of harassment or improper contact was made by the Board. At the time that Mr. Festa informed our Chairman of his resignatioon, it was made clear to Mr. Festa that our Board had not determined that any cause for termination existed under his employment contract.

"We were stunned by the unauthorized disclosure of matters intended to be discussed in a confidential manner by the Carroll Center Board. The Carroll Center respects and appreciates Mr. Festa's efforts and many positive contributions during his tenure as President, and the restraint and dignity he has shown in addressing this most unfortunate situation. We wish him well in his future endeavors."

Twenty-two days ago, the story that Festa had acted inappropriately was definitively refuted, ("No finding of harassment or improper contact was by made by the board"), and so far, there's been not a word in the Boston Globe about that.

They're very busy on Morrissey Boulevard; I'm sure they'll get to it soon.

Reflecting on his exoneration in "Wicked Local Melrose," Festa said, "I've come to realize over these last few months many profound things: how truly fragile our reputations can be, the loyalty of family and friends, the importance of faith, and the knowledge that truth will eventually find a way to express itself."

There's a Time in Every Legislator's Life When City Hall Looks Better than the State House

2011-06-07T14:52:00.000-07:00

If State Rep. Antonio F.D. Cabral's brand new campaign for mayor of New Bedford is successful, he will join a long line of politicians who decided they could get more done at City Hall than at the State House.

Just a few years ago, for example, we saw Chip Clancy leave the Massachusetts Senate and Bob Correia leave the House to become, respectively, the mayors of Lynn and Fall River.

After a long stay in the Massachusetts legislature, where no one can get a law enacted or a budget item adopted on his own, it's understandable that one may look longingly at the strong, unilateral powers that many cities grant their mayors.

You can shape the political dialogue, and you can control the outcome of a political showdown, more easily as a mayor than when you are one of 160 state reps or 40 state senators.

Legislators are no different from the rest of us who drag ourselves out of bed and go to work every morning: they want to get results. They want to be able to point to something good and say, "I did that."

If you're a big-city mayor -- and with a population of 95,000 and a land mass of 24 square miles, New Bedford is a big city -- you get to play in a big urban sandbox.

You can build roads, schools and playgrounds. You can move police and fire departments with a phone call. You can make millionaire developers and Ph.D. sociologists dance to whatever tune you feel like playing.

Compared to a big urban sandbox, the legislature can be like a waiting room at a bus station where the schedules keep changing and every driver is running late, not that it isn't an honor to be in that room.

I've watched Tony Cabral in action for years and I can tell you he is one smart, tenacious and formidable guy. A former teacher, he understands not only how the gears of government turn, but also how they can be made to turn, or not.

At the Massachusetts State House, one of the highest compliments they can give is, So and so "knows how to move an issue." Friends and adversaries alike say that about Tony Cabral.

During budget deliberations, it was always instructive to watch how Cabral moved constantly about the floor of the House while so many others were sitting still. He always seemed to be putting a word in with this chairman or that, or to be on the podium, checking something out with the Speaker and his staff, or to be consulting the papers he carried in his hands and pockets.

Cabral has the natural ability to ask nicely for something while conveying the impression he will not make it easy for you to say no, and that, no, he will not "understand" if you feel you are compelled by circumstances beyond your control to deny him. This bodes well for his effectiveness as New Bedford's chief executive, should he prevail in a multi-candidate field this fall.

Since arriving in the legislature in 1991, he has amassed significant power under a succession of Speakers and is currently a member of leadership by virtue of holding the House chair of the Joint Committee on Bonding, Capital Expenditures and State Administration. But there are many ahead of him in that inertia-wrapped chain of leadership.

I suspect that Cabral, at age 56, was getting impatient for new leadership opportunities and that his hometown looked better and better to him the longer he commuted to the State House . (It is 51 miles from New Bedford to Boston.)

Incumbent New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang's decision not to seek re-election gave Cabral the opportunity to make a move and he seized it yesterday during a spirited outdoor rally in The Whaling City.

In announcing his candidacy, Cabral told of how he came to the U.S. with his family from the island of Pico in the Azores when he was 14 years old. "None of us spoke English. We had neither money nor connections nor an understanding of what life here would be like," he said. "So my parents survived by clinging to a promise, to America's promise: that through hard work and education, their children would succeed."

Best of all, politically, Cabral's run for mayor is low-risk: he does not have to forfeit his House seat to be in the race, although he has said he will not hold both jobs if elected mayor.

Speaking of risk, there's a lot more of it when you're a mayor than a legislator. Just ask Ex-Mayor Clancy and Ex-Mayor Correia, two once very popular gentlemen who ran afoul of ever-demanding and ever-changeable electorates.

With this mayoral campaign, Tony Cabral is clinging to the right promise. Again. He's a good man. I wish him well.

In Time, the Undiluted Joys of a First Election Must Yield to the Complicated Realities of Governing

2011-06-03T15:45:00.000-07:00

There's something about the election to the state legislature of an idealistic young man or woman that does our hearts good. An eager, big-dreaming, 20-something, newly-minted state rep is a walking affirmation of The American Way.

We're happy for that nice young person who is now on her way to claim a seat at the State House. And we're happy with ourselves for putting her in that spot. If our community is capable of rallying behind someone that good, our silent reasoning goes, we must ourselves be pretty good, and, yes, we do have our heads screwed on straight for the future.

Having a case of incurable optimism and a sincere respect for our system of government in all its error-prone and delusional humanity, I'd normally be the last person to put a pin in such sentiments. But when I think of how government actually operates, and of how the imperatives of our system dictate to the human beings functioning within it, not vice-versa, I have to wonder if our high schools and colleges should be injecting more realism into their civics courses.

We shouldn't hesitate to emphasize to our children, for example, that the making of laws is inherently contentious-bordering-on-the-nasty, and that when we fight it out with words, ideas and emotions in the state houses of America, it is very good indeed, for the only alternative is physical force and coercion.

Ninth grade is definitely not too early to introduce impressionable young minds to Machiavelli's "The Prince," with such gems as this:

"Everyone admits how praiseworthy it is in a prince to keep faith, and to live with integrity and not with craft. Nevertheless our experience has been that those princes who have done great things have held good faith of little account, and have known how to circumvent the intellect of men by craft, and in the end have overcome those who have relied on their word. You must know there are two ways of contesting, the one by law, the other by force; the first method is proper to men, the second to beasts; but because the first is frequently not sufficient, it is necessary to have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to understand how to avail himself of the beast and the man."

Anyone fortunate enough to hold elective office will accomplish more, will rise higher, if his understanding extends dispassionately to the depths of human nature and if he has left behind forever the framework of black-and-white when dealing with his peers. (The devil in the House chamber today could be tomorrow's angel.)

This summer we will come to the second anniversary of the death of Ted Kennedy, in whose name an institute for the study of the U.S. Senate will soon materialize on the shores of Dorchester Bay, next to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

Many of us cherish the memory of Ted Kennedy because of all that he did for Massachusetts and all that he accomplished, often against high odds, during 47 years in the Senate. We do not dwell, however, on the harder traits required of a Ted Kennedy to be a Master of the Senate.

A prince must always maintain "the majesty of his rank," Machiavelli advised.

This Ted Kennedy certainly did, even to the point of a majestic rejection of a formidable ally and benefactor, as when he turned down Bill Clinton's entreaties to endorse Hillary for President and embraced Obama instead.

I was reminded recently of the enormity of this move when I heard of a former Clinton cabinet member remarking on how Clinton did everything he could in 1994 to accelerate federal grants to Massachusetts when Kennedy was fending off a stiff re-election challenge from Mitt Romney.

When we delight in the election of an idealistic young newcomer to the legislature, we don't ponder how he or she might one day have to channel a Ted Kennedy or, say, an Everett Dirksen, for whom a majestic Senate office building in Washington, D.C. is named. (It was Dirksen, the great legislative leader from Illinois, who once famously said, "If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women, and still vote against them in the morning, you don't belong in this town.") Why invite the sadness in at such a hopeful juncture?

Beacon Hill Has Been the Scene of Great Events, but the March of the 54th May Be the Greatest of All

2011-05-31T14:47:00.000-07:00

One hundred and fourteen years ago today, on May 31, 1897, a monument now considered among the greatest pieces of public art in the world was dedicated in Boston. It is a work of profound depth, force and historical significance, and it sits precariously close to the traffic at the corner of Park and Beacon Streets, facing the Massachusetts State House:

Augustus Saint-Gaudens's memorial in bronze to the all-black 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and the young Boston Brahmin who commanded it during the Civil War, Robert Gould Shaw -- or "the Shaw Memorial," as it is known for short.

If you've never seen it up close, you have missed an opportunity to experience in your heart and marrow what the Civil War was about: the struggle to end slavery and confer equality on millions of exploited and forsaken African-Americans.

Go see it tomorrow. Cancel an appointment. Skip your lunch, if you have to. It's that good.

In the Shaw Memorial, Saint-Gaudens recreated the occasion on May 23, 1863, when Colonel Shaw, on horseback, led his men on a march through the city to the ships that would take them to battlefields in the south.

As they were that day, the soldiers in the monument are facing west on Beacon Street, solemn and resolute. They seem to be leaning forward, eager for the fight.

It is said that the largest crowd in Boston history up to that time gathered to see the 54th off. Governor John Andrew and the members of the Massachusetts legislature were on the steps of the State House as they passed by. All along Beacon Street, residents came to their windows, doors and balconies to applaud, salute and urge them on with Godspeed.

Colonel Shaw paused briefly at 44 Beacon, his stately home, to acknowledge his parents and his new wife, whom he had married only three weeks previously. They would never see their son and husband again.

After you take a good look at the Shaw Memorial, I strongly recommend that you arrange to go on a tour of the Black Heritage Trail on Beacon Hill sometime this summer. The free tours are offered by the National Park Service, in conjunction with Boston's Museum of African-American History, and they start at the Shaw Memorial.

If you are lucky, you will happen to have as your tour guide that day one Dana Smith, a resident of Beacon Hill and teacher at St. John's Preparatory School in Danvers. He's dangerously good at this sort of thing.

There are many good Park Service guides who can open your eyes to the remarkable (and mostly overlooked) history of African-Americans in Boston and of the abolitionist hotbed that was our capital city in the mid-19th century, but I especially prize Mr. Smith for his passion and eloquence on these topics. He describes, for instance, the march of the 54th on May 23, 1863, in words so scalding and terms so dramatic that you will never forget what happened that day on Beacon Street, where Saint-Gaudens's masterpiece, fourteen years in the making, now presides in quiet majesty.

For more information, go to http://www/afroammuseum.org.htm

Ninety-Two Years Is No Barrier to Loyalty and Friendship in the Famed Yankee Division

2011-05-26T14:50:00.001-07:00

Growing up, I often heard stories about my late uncle, John Doyle, the oldest and kindest of my mother's six brothers. He died of tuberculosis in 1933, losing the chance to fulfill the promise of his great mind and heart.

Uncle John had been a boy-soldier, only 19, in the Massachusetts National Guard, with the Yankee Division, in September 1919 when the Guard was called up during the Boston police strike. The criminal element was having a field day.

The governor at the time, Calvin Coolidge, needed every available soldier not only to protect the lives and property of Bostonians but also to send a strong message that the government had the situation in hand. Nine people died over the brief course of the strike, but it could have been much worse.

"There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime," Coolidge declared, words that resounded across the nation and put Coolidge on the road to the White House.

One of the details from my mother's stories about Uncle John has always stayed with me:

During the strike, my grandfather was concerned that his son was not properly outfitted for sleeping on the sidewalks, as the soldiers had to do, so he took his only overcoat and walked from his home in Revere to Boston and began searching for John's unit, Company D of the 15th Infantry Regiment. It took hours but my grandfather found Uncle John and handed him the long old coat that would provide additional insulation from the cold pavement. Then he walked straight home.

Today, it so happens that the Yankee Division is on active duty in Afghanistan, and that a young and distinguished member of the Doyle family, a career soldier in the regular Army, has formed a special bond with these Massachusetts reservists on account of his ancestral tie to the division.

With Memorial Day upon us, it is worth pondering, and celebrating, such quintessentially American ties, for they have the strength to span generations and continents.

Lieutenant Colonel Brian J. Doyle of the 3rd Battalion of the Fourth Infantry Division is the grand-nephew of my Uncle John and the son of my first cousin, Kevin Doyle, a Marine combat veteran of the Viet Nam War.

Brian, like his father before him, is once again risking his life for his country, this time in Afghanistan, where he is currently working with a company from the Yankee Division in Kabul. Because he had read a book on the Doyle family written by my aunt, Arlene Browne of Charlestown, Brian knew of Uncle John's membership in the Yankee Division.

In due course, Brian mentioned this to his Yankee Division colleagues; and in a recent e-mail to Arlene, Brian described their reaction:

"They were very excited to learn about the connection and even presented me with one of their patches...It is funny. In my 17 years in the Army I have never served with anyone else from Massachusetts, and now they are everywhere. Kind of feels like home."

Where I hope they'll all be soon.

Even the President of the United States Will Say Yes If You Know How to Put It On Him

2011-05-23T14:44:00.000-07:00

If you were any damn good at all in Chelsea, Massachusetts, where my father was from, God rest his soul, you had to be able to "put it on him."

You had to be able to clear your throat, open your mouth and ask for something in plain, direct words. With confidence.

And if the person you were addressing tried to ignore you or give you the old sidestep, you had to be able to ask again, only this time louder and not so polite.

Being a product of the Great Depression, my father was obsessed with getting a good deal whenever he bought something. It didn't matter if it was 6:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve, there were only two trees left on the lot, and the nearest lot was six miles away; if the Christmas tree guy wouldn't knock two bucks off the already-reduced price, we were out of there.

My father even had the "moxie," a good Chelsea term that, to ask the man at the donut shop for "donuts with small holes." And he expected us kids to do the same when we were sent into the shop on those days he had worked overtime and his bad leg was acting up.

I think I was maybe 10 years old when I made my first perilous donut pick-up on my own. Returning to the car, I had barely closed the door and handed over the change when he inquired, "Did you get the ones with small holes?"

"Uh," I started to answer.

"You didn't, did you?" he said, giving me that awful you're-a-disappointment stare. "I told you, 'You have to put it on him.' "

Last Wednesday night, May 18, I thought of my father, fondly, while I was attending the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Boston dinner-fundraiser at the Westin Waterfront. They were honoring the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, President Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame.

Father Hesburgh, now 94 or thereabouts, couldn't be there because he was recovering from surgery, so he asked the current president of Notre Dame, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, to receive the organization's "Justice and Compassion Award" on his behalf.

Father Jenkins gave a brief, very engaging talk about his distinguished predecessor, who served on a number of Presidential commissions through the years and became friends with every President from Dwight Eisenhower to Bill Clinton.

One day, as Father Jenkins recalled, President Carter called Father Hesburgh to thank him for his good work and to ask if there was anything he could do for him, as an expression of Presidential-quality gratitude.

Father Hesburgh, an aviation buff, didn't hesitate.

"I understand that there is a prototype of a new supersonic fighter jet. I'd like to ride in that plane," Father Jenkins quoted Father Hesburgh as saying.

"You're not even supposed to know about that plane," President Carter replied. "I don't see how I could do that: allow you, a civilian, to go flying around in it."

I doubt that Father Hesburgh ever spent any time in Chelsea, but he knew what to do next.

"Mr. President, you are the commander in chief," he told President Carter. "You can do what you want. The military has to do what you tell them."

Father Jenkins paused for effect, then declared, "Father Hesburgh flew in that plane!"

Entrepreneur-Turned-Senator Wolf Obviously Has an Eye for Talent

2011-05-20T12:40:00.002-07:00

Talk to anybody who runs an organization and they'll tell you the most important thing they do, the task most crucial to their success, is hiring.

The reason is simple: unless you have a job like Barbra Streisand's, you can't get the job done on your own.

You need other people. You have to work in groups to produce a product, provide a service, win a game, achieve a marketable result, etc.

This is something obviously known to Dan Wolf, the leader who built Cape Air into a regional juggernaut and the new Democratic state senator for the Cape Cod and Islands district in Massachusetts.

Other people tried before him to build a regional airline on the Cape and failed, whereas Wolf succeeded in a way that can fairly be called spectacular, especially now that the business has been thriving and expanding for 23 years straight. He would not have been able to do that were he not a good spotter, good recruiter, good inspirer and good retainer of Talent with a capital T.

Those skills were also on display when Wolf put together his senatorial staff, which includes:

Seth Rolbein, chief of staff, graduate of Harvard, documentary filmmaker, newspaper reporter and editor, and author of two books on the environmental clean-up efforts at the Massachusetts Military Reservation in Bourne.

Micaelah Morrill, legislative director, UMass Amherst grad, and four-year staff veteran of Wolf's predecessor, Rob O'Leary, who left the senate to pursue the (Bill Delahunt) Congressional seat ultimately won by former senator and Norfolk DA Bill Keating.

Jay Coburn, director of community relations, Cornell grad, former community activist and small business owner, former member of the Provincetown Planning Board, and current member of the Truro Democratic Town Committee.

Sue Rohrbach, district director, Brown undergrad and UMass post-grad, expert on land use planning, coordinator for campaigns for the Cape Cod Land Bank and for the preservation of 15,000 acres at the Massachusetts Military Reservation as the Upper Cape Water Reserve, and former member of the Barnstable Town Council, Planning Board, Community Preservation Committee, and Charter Commission.

Suzanne Legere, scheduler and director of constituent services, former Cape Air employee, Habitat for Humanity volunteer, and volunteer fundraiser for numerous charities.

While this is an impressive assembly, their credentials and experience are not all that unusual for State House staffers. The number of people you find who have advanced degrees, serious private sector resumes, and a cheerful willingness to work at the State House for short money because they want to do something good for society is actually kind of amazing.

Senator Wolf has reminded us how deep the talent pool is, thankfully, for legislative staff in Massachusetts.

Cape Cod Pilot, a Big Success in Business, Charts a Course in the Public Sector

2011-05-18T13:15:00.000-07:00

There he is, Dan Wolf, commercial pilot, visionary entrepreneur, nature-lover, doting dad, and rookie member of the Massachusetts Senate!

I used to wonder why he's there. What inspired him to run for public office for the first time at age 52? Why did he prove as good at electioneering as he is at running a business? (Seldom does anyone with zero electoral experience win one of the 40 seats in the senate the first time out of the gate.)

Everyone who runs for office says they are doing it to serve the public. For many of them, that is a true statement. But, almost always, that desire is coupled with above-average (often way above) ambition.

I'm talking about the very human drive to be in a position of power and influence, to be among a group of powerful and influential people, to deal with serious matters affecting large numbers of people, to bend the course of public events, and to be regarded by wide swaths of your fellow citizens as a leader. (No parent ever tells her kid to be a follower.)

It is also the ambition, a hunger really, to spend one's limited time on earth dealing effectively with unquestionably consequential matters, and perhaps thus to hold, at the end, the profoundly compensatory conviction that one has spent oneself in a worthy cause and has acquitted oneself well in the battles one had to fight. Where would our species be without ambition?

When harnessed to a sharp mind and a strong character, ambition is a great thing. Abraham Lincoln, for example, was described by those who knew him when he was young as the most ambitious man they'd ever met.

And while history has yet to judge Barack Obama, can anyone doubt that he is one of the most ambitious men America has ever produced? If ever there was one, Obama is a phenom of ambition, a fatherless boy who rose, as if jet-propelled, from mean circumstances in our most distant province, Hawaii, to the most powerful position, the highest stage, in the world.

In 1988, Dan Wolf, a graduate of Wesleyan College, was managing the tiny airport in Chatham on Cape Cod when he and another pilot and an outside investor founded Cape Air. They had one airplane and they used it to ferry passengers between Provincetown and Boston. More than one small airline had come to grief before them in the same market.

Today, Cape Air is one of the largest independent regional airlines in the nation, due mainly to Wolf's leadership. It serves nearly three-quarters of a million passengers annually and employs about a thousand people.

Cape Air is intensively focused on its customers, its employees and the Greater Cape community. Its motto: "Make Our Customers Happy and Have a Good Time Doing it."

In 1995, Cape Air was converted to an employee-owned company, a move that reflected CEO Wolf's "principles of marrying sound business and fair equity."

Creating a business from scratch, uplifting and empowering employees, winning the consistent plaudits of customers in the frazzling world of air travel, and holding leadership posts in numerous community organizations would be more than enough for most people. But Dan Wolf is not most people.

The Massachusetts State House beckoned. The challenge of the "City Upon a Hill" proved irresistible.

The dream of public service must have been kindled early in his life. Wolf's official legislative biography notes that he has "four siblings, a father who is a successful entrepreneur, and a mother who is a professor of American history," that "family conversations around the dinner table were always spirited and often political," and that "Senator Wolf attended Germantown Friends School (Philadelphia, PA) for 13 years; Quaker values and education shaped his worldview."

We won't know for a while what Wolf can, and will, do with the power of a state senator. But it's unlikely his tenure at the State House will be run of the mill. He didn't go up there because he needed a job, salary and pension.

If he stays in the legislature for the requisite time, expect him to rise to a central role in leadership. He's smart, he knows how to get along with people, and he's no grandstander. His ambition is tethered to altruism (hallelujah!)...and he has a very talented staff.

NEXT: A look at Senator Dan Wolf's staff.

Birmingham Completes Historic Journey: the Streets of Chelsea to a Shrine in the Senate Reading Room

2011-05-13T15:53:00.000-07:00

I went up to the Senate Reading Room today to see the new portrait of Tom Birmingham, the pride of Chelsea, Harvard University and Harvard Law School.

The Reading Room is a large, ornate, high-ceilinged affair in a good corner of Bulfinch's original State House building. It is on the third floor, across from the Senate Chamber.

Sunshine, undimmed by any cloud, flooded in through the big windows and made me feel like I had happened upon the most cheerful old mansion on earth.

The portrait of Birmingham, who served as President of the Massachusetts Senate from 1996 to 2002, sat on an easel in the middle of the room, behind velvet ropes like the kind used in theatres, backlit dramatically by the spring-morning light. Soon it would join the other portraits on the walls there: the Coolidge, the Donahue, the Harrington, the Bulger and the Travaglini.

I was the only one in the Reading Room when I visited, and had plenty of time to study the handiwork of the artist, George Nick.

I can tell you now it is an accurate rendering of the former Senate chieftain because it captures the man's intelligence, reserve and ambition. Nick's Birmingham doesn't smile, and he does not demand to be noticed. Rather, he pulls you in by the gravity of thought. In this likeness, he is a scholar-politician with a serious, churning mind -- a guarded, analytical soul who would have no trouble figuring you out, if he cared to try.

The background also has much to tell, with its smaller portrait-within-a-portrait of Horace Mann, one of the greatest public figures in the history of our nation and himself a former Massachusetts Senate President (1836-37), on the left, and its view of the golden-domed State House, framed by a window, on the right.

Nick, a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, told the State House News Service at yesterday's unveiling that the split background was meant to depict Birmingham's dual status as "an insider and an outsider."

Through the person of Horace Mann, Nick developed this theme cunningly, for Mann was a revolutionary in so many ways, an intellectual and an activist who fought for the abolition of slavery, women's rights, the compassionate care of the mentally ill, and, most of all, for free and universal education, which is how he came to be regarded as the father of public education in this country.

Mann struggled against the currents of his era and, at the same time, stood for, and won, public offices. His peers sent him to the Massachusetts legislature and later to the Congress, where he initially filled out the term of the deceased (once President) John Quincy Adams. Mann also held appointive office as secretary to the state Board of Education for a long spell.

More than a century separates Senators Mann and Birmingham, but the cause of education binds them close.

In his first term, Rhodes Scholar Birmingham was named Senate chair of the Joint Committee on Education and set about drafting, together with former Rep. Mark Roosevelt, the comprehensive Education Reform Act, which has had, since its enactment in 1993, a tremendously beneficial impact on both the physical quality of our public schools and the quality of the instruction offered therein.

Birmingham was a driving force in getting education reform through, and was a major guarantor of the funding for the bill when he became, successively, chair of Senate Ways and Means and Senate President. The Massachusetts economy was booming in the 1990s, and Birmingham helped direct literally billions of boom-related revenue to education. This endeared him to many constituencies, but others complained he was lavishing money on schools and catering to the teachers' unions. Birmingham brushed aside the critics and kept the money flowing, year after year.

On a Saturday morning in the Fall of 2000, I attended the dedication of the new Lafayette School in Everett, a densely populated part of Birmingham's district. I went to support my sister-in-law, Rosemary Catterson, who was the principal of the Lafayette, and to see the school.

Birmingham was on the dais, a star of the show because of his crucial work in securing state construction dollars. Speaker after speaker that day, everyone from the mayor and superintendent of schools to the construction foreman and rookie school committeeman, extolled the vision and effectiveness of the Senate President.

And when the outdoor ceremonies were over and the audience was at last invited to inspect the "new Lafayette," I approached the dais where Birmingham tarried, while everyone else headed inside.

"Going on the tour, Mr. President?" I asked. "This is your crowd. You should soak up the praise."

Birmingham, in full outsider mode, put a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, smiled faintly and said, "No. I think I'll go along."

Maybe that was where his power came from, I thought: he didn't crave the approval.

Governor's Councilor Was Aiming for the Senate When She Shot Herself in the Foot

2011-05-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

Memo to Jennie Caissie: Generally, it's not a good idea to insult someone who has a say in eliminating your job.

Caissie serves on the eight-member Governor's Council, also known as the Executive Council, the mostly invisible arm of state government that confirms the governor's judicial nominees. This week she came out with both guns blazing at state senators who want to do away with the council on the grounds that it is a costly (at least $400,000 per year) relic of our colonial past.

"Quite frankly, I can't imagine a more politically corrupt system than having the senate approve judges in this one-party state," said Caissie, one of two newly-elected Republicans on the Governor's Council. "Talk about a shake-down that would make a thug on the streets of Chicago blush."

In most states, the senate confirms judicial nominees, and some Massachusetts legislators have indeed suggested that our senate could easily do the job, but the latest word is that senate leaders, and others, don't want to go that route. They're afraid it would look too much like a power grab.

Folks are leaning, instead, to having a new group vet, and vote on, judges -- a group composed, say, of the Attorney General, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and President of the Massachusetts Bar Association. So Caissie was shooting down an option that had already been taken off the table.

That doesn't mean her words haven't drawn blood at the State House though.

Senate proponents of eliminating the Governor's Council wouldn't be worthy of their bumper stickers if they didn't try to turn Caissie's words against the council.

Will those words cause more senators to jump on the elimination bandwagon? Maybe.

Being dissed by someone who collects $26,000 a year to attend a brief meeting now and then, while all the time rolling up pension credits, can do wonders for your motivation.

The state constitution will have to be amended by popular vote before the Governor's Council can be eliminated. And in order for the proposal to get on the statewide ballot, the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Senate will have to vote for the measure in two consecutive years while meeting in a formal session known as a Constitutional Convention.

The legislature has scheduled its next Constitutional Convention on July 13 at 1:00 p.m. in the House chamber.

I hope Ms. Caissie will be in the lobby that day, making the pitch to passing senators and reps that the Governor's Council is a trusty tool of democracy, a venerable institution that does not deserve to die. That could get interesting fast.

If We Had Listened to Senator Kerry, Trillions Could Have Been Saved in War on Terror

2011-05-07T08:03:00.000-07:00

Think back to the Presidential election of 2004: George W. Bush, incumbent, vs. John F. Kerry, U.S. Senator, Massachusetts.

Can you recall the way President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney ridiculed Senator Kerry for suggesting that the War on Terror was misconceived, and that we could deal more effectively with terrorism by taking a law enforcement approach?

On Oct. 10, 2004, the New York Times published an article, "Kerry's Undeclared War," which said that "Kerry's adversaries have found it easy to ridicule his views on foreign policy, suggesting that his idea of counter-terrorism is simply to go around arresting all the terrorists. This is what Dick Cheney was getting at when he said last month that there was a danger, should Kerry be elected, that 'we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind-set, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war.' "

http://www/nytimes.com/2004/10/10/magazine/10KERRY.html?pagewanted=print

Nearly ten years after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., and nearly seven years after Bush was re-elected president, our number one enemy in the War on Terror, Osama bin Laden has just been eliminated, and our nation seems to be taking stock.

In an article publushed May 6 in the National Journal, bin Laden was described as "the most expensive public enemy in American history."

What's striking, say the authors, Tim Fernholz and Jim Tankersley, is "how much he cost our nation -- and how little we've gained from our fight against him. By conservative estimates, bin Laden cost the United States at least $3 trillion over the past 15 years, counting the disruptions he wrought on the domestic economy, the wars and heightened security triggered by the terrorist attacks he engineered, and the direct efforts to hunt him down."

http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/the-cost-of-bin-laden-3-trillion-over-15-years-20110505?page=1

Matt Bai, who penned "Kerry's Undeclared War" for the New York Times, didn't know in October, 2004, that Kerry would lose the election, so he was comfortable speculating that Kerry's view "might be the beginning of a compelling vision."

Bai explained: "The idea that America and its allies, sharing resources and using the latest technologies, could track the movements of terrorists, seize their bank accounts and carry out targeted military strikes to eliminate them, seems more optimistic and more practical than the notion that the conventional armies of the United States will inevitably have to punish or even invade every Islamic country that might abet radicalism."

Following somewhat in Bai's footsteps this week was George F. Will, a conservative who probably wore a bow tie to his christening. Will mused in a May 3 column, published locally in the Boston Herald, on the law-enforcement-vs.-war-making question and came down firmly on the side of Senator Kerry.

Perhaps America can use bin Laden's death, Will said, "to draw a deep breath and some pertinent conclusions," adding, "Many salient facts about the tracking of terrorism's most prolific killer to his lair -- some lair: not a remote cave but an urban compound -- must remain shrouded in secrecy, for now. But one surmise seems reasonable: bin Laden was brought down by intelligence gathering that more resembles excellent police work than a military operation."

Wouldn't it be nice if this were all an academic exercise, an historical post-mortem?

But the war in Afghanistan, now in its ninth year, grinds on and on. Some American mother's son is killed there every day.

Our national debt, which morphed to obscene dimensions as we waged a ruinous war in Iraq because of weapons that did not exist, casts a huge shadow over our children and grandchildren's future.

And Dick Cheney, I bet, still scoffs at John Kerry.

Union Chief Didn't Hesitate to Carpet-Bomb the House in Battle Over Bargaining Changes

2011-05-05T09:15:00.000-07:00

Don't ask Bobby Haynes a question if you can't take an honest answer. And don't say anything critical about the labor movement if you're not ready for a fight.

Haynes, the Massachusetts President of the AFL-CIO, is blunt to a fault. He stabs no one in the back. He puts it right into your chest.

I couldn't dislike Mr. Haynes if I tried.

His way of expressing himself, however, can sometimes be a bit much. Subtlety is not his deal. He can crack the crystal and china without even pounding the table.

How over the top can Bobby Haynes be?

Consider his verbal carpet-bombing of the Massachusetts House of Representatives after it voted, 111-42, on Tuesday night, April 26, to change a law, via the budget process, to allow cities and towns to change co-pays and deductibles in employee health plans without bargaining.

"It's clearly union busting," Haynes declared. "It looks just like Wisconsin to me. It looks just like Ohio to me. I am profoundly disappointed in every Democrat who voted to do away with collective bargaining here in Massachusetts."

I don't know about you, but I have not seen in the last few days any newly defunct municipal employee unions or any union agents rendered suddenly irrelevant by the robbery of their collective bargaining powers. We're talking co-pays and deductibles here, hardly the equivalent of Reagan doing his Trump act on the air traffic controllers.

As biting as Haynes was after the House voted for these tweaks to the collective bargaining process, he was even harder and angrier beforehand.

Union officials made a last-minute plea to House Speaker Robert DeLeo shortly before the House vote, the State House News Service reported, and as the union emissaries were leaving that confab, Haynes paused to recount to the SHNS's Kyle Cheney this parting exchange:

"The Speaker told us good luck when we left his office, and I told him good luck and good luck to his Democratic members. Can you imagine what teachers and firefighters and police officers and public sector workers and nurses and librarians are going to think when they wake up tomorrow morning to find out the Democrats that we elected, that we worked for, that we contributed to their campaigns, just snatched collective bargaining away from them, just took the voice, the Democratic voice, away from working people?

"I say good luck to him. And good luck to the future of this House."

On Wednesday afternoon, April 27, I was talking with a Democratic rep who had voted with labor, and against the Speaker, on this issue. He described the enormous pressure that labor applied to defeat it, and the lesser pressure from leadership to pass it.

"Bobby Haynes won you over, then?" I asked.

"No," he quickly said. "Haynes was way over the top. Exaggerated as hell. He didn't help, running around, making all those statements. It was the union folks in my district, with all their phone calls and appeals, who made the case. No one threatened, no one raised their voice."

A Less Gutsy Speaker Might Have 'Protected' His Members from This Difficult Vote

2011-05-03T14:28:00.000-07:00

The Massachusetts House of Representatives was a profile in courage last week when it bucked the unions and voted, 111 to 42, in favor of a measure giving cities and towns the power to make some unilateral changes in employee health plans.

But many of the reps who voted for this change in collective bargaining law are now asking themselves: Was it worth it?

The measure is hardly a favorite in the Senate, where the onus will be on getting it introduced and voted on later this month. The Governor is signaling that he has problems with it, too.

So that stout-hearted stand by 111 House members on Tuesday night, April 26, taken in the hope of saving the state's 351 cities and towns a total of $100 million next year, may produce at the end of the day nothing more than a grudge in every union hall and a bunch of banged-up Democratic reps.

Robert DeLeo, the House Speaker, and Brian Dempsey, the first-year Chairman of House Ways & Means, should be praised, first, for making this proposal part of the House budget, and second, for going all out to secure the impressive majority that blessed it.

They had to know that Robert Haynes, Massachusetts President of the AFL-CIO, would be shouting about "union busting," and complaining how the Democrats, of all people, are trying to turn Massachusetts into another Wisconsin! And they had to know that Ed Kelly, the tough, new President of the Professional Firefighters of Massachusetts, would be saying things like, "There's a class war going on in this country and today the Massachusetts House sided against the middle class." But they did it anyway because they heard the cries of the middle class folks who pay the taxes that fund municipal employee benefits, folks who do not have the option of bargaining at all with their bosses on changes to their health plans, if they work in the private sector.

"By spending less on the healthcare costs of municipal employees, our cities and towns will be able to retain jobs and allot more funding to necessary services like education and public safety," DeLeo pointed out.

"What we've recognized," said Dempsey, "is that, unfortunately, because of the cost of health insurance, a very large percentage of the monies we commit (to local aid) are unfortunately going to fund municipal health insurance. Now, that's not anyone's fault. We're not blaming anyone for the rise in health insurance. But, it's a fact...The cost of health insurance is going up, and the money we commit every year, it's not going to textbooks. It's not going to classroom size. Unfortunately, it's going to a large degree to fund municipal health insurance."

These valid reasons for making a tough vote have not prevented some House members from grumbling that the Speaker should have "protected the members" better than he did.

"Protecting the members" is a State House term that can describe a variety of actions, or stances, that the leadership may take in order to make their underlings look good to their constituents. In this instance, it suggests that the Speaker should not have let the issue come up for a vote once he saw how forceful the union opposition was and how shaky the prospects are that it will pass in the Senate and not be vetoed by the Governor.

Undoubtedly, the Speaker knew he was risking this kind of back-biting, but took that risk in the interest of the taxpayers. Life and politics being what they are, the taxpayers will soon forget he did so. But not the unions.

In This Temple of Tradition, Everything Stops for the Ritual of the Maiden Speech

2011-04-29T11:59:00.000-07:00

One cannot profess to understand the Massachusetts House of Representatives if he has never witnessed a maiden speech in the grand, wood-paneled oval that is the House chamber.

This past Wednesday, I had the good fortune to see not one but two representatives deliver their maiden speeches within an hour of each other. Sheila Harrington, Republican of Groton, was the first; Carlos Henriquez, Democrat of Dorchester, was the second.

Wednesday was the third straight day the House was in session for the purpose of finalizing its version of the new state budget, a project that requires legislators to take up and decide upon hundreds of proposed budget amendments.

These deliberations cover a tremendous range of programs, and often deal with line items running into the millions of dollars. Yet the process becomes uninteresting within 30 minutes and fatiguing within an hour. It's like watching a snow plow clear a perilous mountain road while travelling at one mile per hour. You know the thing could tumble off a cliff at any moment, but the tedious pace kills your interest. Against this backdrop, a maiden speech is a dose of excitement, a welcome reminder that politics is always about people even when (or especially when) the topic is money.

It's not the subject matter or diction of a maiden speech that make it noteworthy, it's the uniqueness of the moment.

Anyone elected to the legislature has been dreaming of the day he or she would enter the State House, be addressed as Representative or Senator, and shown to an office. Inauguration day, in other words. The next threshold moment comes when he or she rises to speak for the first time on the floor, when they finally get to add their official voices to the never-ending conversation of democracy.

Rep. Harrington gave her first speech in advocacy of an amendment (#590) she had filed in the hope of cutting spending in the public defenders program, which provides lawyers to indigent persons charged with crimes. This put her at odds with leadership; there was little chance her amendment would be adopted.

Nevertheless, House Speaker Robert DeLeo left his private office and came to the podium for the express purpose of introducing Rep. Harrington and encouraging members to give her a warm and attentive reception.

She spoke for about 10 minutes, earnestly and with patent conviction. Everyone in the chamber listened respectfully for the entire time she was at the mic, which is not what usually happens when someone is addressing the House, not by a long shot.

Then every member in attendance -- 154 out of 160 reps were there -- lined up in the center aisle to shake her hand, congratulate her, tell her what a good job she had done. Many embraced her and kissed her on the cheek. It actually took more time for Rep. Harrington to be extolled than it did for her to speak on her amendment, which went down to defeat anyway, 118 to 36, when action resumed.

The maiden speech of Rep. Henriquez was devoted to a section of the consolidated amendment on the judiciary adding $3 million to the community safety initiative named in honor of the late state senator, Charlie Shannon of Winchester, who entered politics after retiring from the State Police.

Again, Speaker DeLeo arrived to make the introduction. Rep. Henriquez spoke passionately but with careful self-control about how the "Shannon grants" had helped reduce violence and death while he was growing up on the streets of Boston. "Even a young man like me, raised in a loving household with two hardworking parents," he said, "was exposed to the reality of gang and gun violence, often tempted by fast money, peer pressure, or the camaraderie that gang life offers while parents may be at work."

Like Rep. Harrington before him, Rep. Henriquez commanded the attention of the pin-drop-quiet chamber throughout his remarks. And like her, he received a spirited round of applause from his colleagues, who then eagerly lined up to shake hands and congratulate him, and to prophesy for him a sparkling future at the State House.

Now, there were scores of budget amendments that had to be dealt with, and everyone knew the session would drag on into the warm spring night, but no one hurried. For a few minutes, they were happy to put aside partisan roles and maneuvering for their districts to follow an ages-old custom: the taking of the new one into the tribe.

Legislators who have served for two decades or more, and who have given thousands of speeches on the floor, can tell you still what their maiden speeches were like and who charged up to greet them first when they were done.

When the Mayor and Police Start Swinging at Each Other, the Public Has to Duck

2011-04-27T09:30:00.000-07:00

One night back in 1974 or 75, the Malden City Council was holding its regular weekly meeting when a dispute arose over some action by the police department. I can't remember the details. It may have had to do with the ticketing of cars in a particular section and the councilor for that ward was complaining. Or it may have been a question about the number of officers patrolling the streets overnight and a councilor was demanding that the chief appear for questioning.

In any event, the temperature in the room shot up in a matter of seconds. It was obvious that a significant minority of the 11 councilors was ready for a fight. Some were unhappy with what the police had done, others were sticking up for the cops.

Malden's long-serving mayor, Walter Kelliher, a lieutenant commander in the Navy during World War II, was attending the meeting, as was his practice, and became uncomfortable with the critical examination of a subject that had not attracted any attention before that night.

He may have sent a signal to the council president or not, but all of a sudden the president banged the gavel and called for a 10-minute recess. People shuffled about as they do at recesses. Little murmurring groups formed at the back of the council chamber, in the adjoining council office, and in the hallway.

As a reporter covering the event, I sidled up to the mayor to hear what he was saying to a member of his staff, one councilor and a former member of the council who happened to be in the building. Kelliher had a distinct view, which has stuck with me all these years.

"You never want a discussion like this coming up in public just because somebody feels like talking about it," I heard him say. "The police are our first line of defense, they have the toughest job: guaranteeing public safety. You don't want to undermine the confidence of the public in the police, because if that goes, you'll have problems much worse than the one we're talking about now."

Whether it was the break in the action or the emergence of cooler heads, the mid-meeting idleness had the desired effect. When the council reconvened, there was a quick voice vote to table the matter until the police chief had time to investigate and report back to the council's public safety committee. I can't recall if such a report, verbal or written, was ever made, but I don't think the matter ever came up again, at least in public.

Kelliher's words have come back to me again and again as I've read recent reports out of Lawrence, (population 76,377), where the rookie mayor, William Lantigua, is fighting with the police. The friction has been caused by, among other things, a sharp reduction in the number of police officers due to departmental budget cuts. At the same time, Lantigua is reportedly under investigation by state and federal authorities for his dealings with Lawrence towing companies, nightclubs and taxi operators.

You don't have to be a professor of journalism to discern that (unnamed) members of the Lawrence Police Department are feeding the media some of the details of these investigations. Lantigua, for the record, denies having done anything wrong.

With its chronic financial problems, depressed local economy, high unemployment, and a now-rising crime rate, the last thing Lawrence needs is animosity and distrust between its mayor and police department. Long known as the "Immigrant City," Lawrence is one of several older, former industrial powerhouse cities in Massachusetts that are doing the heavy work of helping to turn poor newcomers into successful new Americans, work that benefits our society as a whole.

Politics, however, never takes a back seat to civics. So it was hardly surprising when a prominent elected Republican used the latest controversy in Lawrence to slam Lantigua and the mayor's fellow Democrats. "As far as I'm concerned, Deval Patrick and John Walsh (chairman of the state Democratic committee) own this guy (Lantigua)...They spent a lot of money to get him elected," the Boston Herald quoted this gentleman as saying.

If one party could turn the "ownership" of an urban dilemma over to another, this world would be a much neater place. But in the land of no-make-believe, we all own a piece of the Lawrences of America, and always will.

Legislators Are Not Fanatics When It Comes to Budget Discipline

2011-04-22T13:47:00.000-07:00

You can say about "budget discipline" in the Massachusetts legislature what you can say about a lot of things in life: It's there until it isn't.

Legislative leaders naturally seek to impose discipline on the annual budget process. A budget could never get done if hard choices were not made and people at the top were not exerting themselves to make those choices stick.

One tenet of budget discipline holds that members of leadership cannot buck the leadership. For example, when Ways & Means puts out a budget, members of leadership are supposed to stand by and salute. They are not supposed to try to change it by putting their names on controversial budget amendments or taking contrary positions on policies that have a strong budgetary component.

That's how the system has always worked, at least in theory.

One must realize that leadership is a rather swollen concept in our legislature. The leadership team goes beyond the Speaker, Majority Leader, Speaker Pro Tem, Assistant Majority Leader and Second Assistant Majority Leader to include the chairs of some 30-plus committees and the chairs of the four separate divisions on the floor of the House.

With numbers and influence like that, leadership obviously has a big advantage in getting a budget through the 160-member House that looks a lot like the one issued by Ways & Means -- if budget discipline holds.

Expectation-wise, that's a lot of toes to get onto one line and keep there, though. And when budget discipline collides with political imperatives in a bunch of House districts, those toes can wind up elsewhere, as we learned again early this week.

No less than six committee chairs affixed their names to a budget amendment, backed forcefully by organized labor, which would undo a major feature of the budget released April 13 by Ways & Means.

The feature in question would allow cities and towns to make changes to employee health coverage without negotiating with employee unions, as they are now obliged to do. It was estimated that this one change, if enacted, would save cities and towns a total of at least $100 million in the next fiscal year.

South Boston's Marty Walsh, chair of the House Ethics Committee, took the lead in introducing an amendment that would replace that feature with a much weaker measure, one that would give municipal unions 45 days to negotiate proposed changes in health benefits, such as higher co-pays, and would turn the issue over to an arbitrator for a binding decision if the union and municipality were unable to come to a resolution.

In addition to the six committee chairs, more than 40 reps agreed to co-sponsor the Walsh amendment.

The AFL-CIO is pulling out all the stops to get the amendment through, and has let every House member know that it will watch, record and report on how they vote on it next week during the budget debate.

Given the firm, traditional emphasis on budget discipline, it was surprising that House leaders reacted to the Walsh insurrection so stoically as to appear more like philosophers than political potentates.

"Folks have differing opinions on how to get to reform," said Ways & Means Chair Brian Dempsey.

There could be a rip-roaring fight over this next week. Or Walsh & Co. could easily carry the day if most Democrats reckon it's better to frustrate their leaders than it is to tick off the AFL-CIO.

David Simon's Portrait of Inner-City Baltimore Is Mirrored, Tragically, Across the USA

2011-04-20T14:29:00.000-07:00

I'm recommending that all my friends read the interview with David Simon, co-creator of the HBO drama The Wire, in the current edition (April, 2011) of Guernica, "a magazine of art & politics." Find it online at http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/2530/simon_4_1_11/

Recipient of a MacArthur Foundation $500,000 "genius grant," Simon is a former reporter at the Baltimore Sun whose writings formed the bases of two successful television series, Homicide and The Corner, before he turned his ferocious attention to the drug trade in Baltimore and the horrible effects it has had on the poor people who live there. The result of those efforts, which he undertook with Ed Burns, a former Baltimore police officer and public schoolteacher, was The Wire, which ran for five seasons on HBO.

Many consider The Wire the best TV program ever made, a judgment I happen to share.

Baltimore provided the canvas for Simon's devastating portrait, but the picture of inner-city life we encounter in The Wire is mirrored, tragically, in poor and neglected neighborhoods across the nation, including some in Massachusetts. These are places where the economy seems permanently depressed and where kids begin life 20 yards back from the starting line where most of us are launched from.

If you're not familiar with Mr. Simon -- the man and his works -- I encourage you, please, Correct that situation! And if my humble exhortation doesn't persuade you, perhaps these excerpts from his comments in the lengthy Guernica interview will:

"America now jails more of its people than any country, including all totalitarian states. We pretend to a war against narcotics, but in truth, we are simply brutalizing and dehumanizing an urban underclass that we no longer need as a labor supply."

"...The Wire was not a story about America, it's about the America that got left behind."

"These really are the excess people in America. Our economy doesn't need them -- we don't need 10 or 15 percent of our population...the ones who are undereducated, who have been ill-served by the inner city school system, who have been unprepared for the technocracy of the modern economy, we pretend to need them."

"...they're not foolish. They get it. They understand that the only viable economic base in their neighborhoods is this multibillion-dollar drug trade."

"I am very cynical about institutions and their willingness to address themselves to reform. I am not cynical when it comes to individuals and people. And I think the reason The Wire is watchable, even tolerable, to viewers is that it has great affection for individuals. It's not misanthropic in any way."

"...I would decriminalize drugs in a heartbeat. I would put all the interdiction money, all the incarceration money, all the enforcement money, all of the pretrial, all the prep, all of that cash, I would hurl it as fast as I could into drug treatment and job training and jobs programs. I would rather turn these neighborhoods inward with jobs programs. Even if it was the urban equivalent of FDR's CCC -- the Civilian Conservation Corps -- if it was New Deal-type logic, it would be doing less damage than creating a war syndrome."

Ex-Senate Staffer Now in Municipal Government Experiences State Budget Differently

2011-04-18T11:48:00.001-07:00

It was good to see the House Ways and Means Committee and its new chairman, Brian Dempsey of Haverhill, in action last Wednesday (April 13) during their press conference presenting the House version of the new state budget. Dempsey did a fine job running the show, especially when you consider that the $30.45 billion budget package he brought with him contains a number of items that are hard for some traditional Democratic constituencies to swallow. (Yes, that was the head of the firefighters' union at the front of the room, just steps from members of the Way and Means Committee, grimacing like someone about to be wheeled into an operating room.)

The budget blues are inevitable when you consider that (a) Ways and Means had to address a $1.9 billion deficit, (the difference between built-in expenses and projected state income for the fiscal year that will begin July 1), and (b) the federal government has turned off the recovery money spigot it opened in late-2008 to help get the states through the worst recession in 70 years.

But I would have found the press conference worthwhile if for no other reason than the chance conversation I had, as the event was breaking up, with a former longtime staff person in the Massachusetts Senate. This gentleman now works for the mayor of one of our older cities, a place that has seen better days. I hadn't bumped into him in several years. "How is it to be back in this building?" I asked. "Good, good," he said, as people patted him on the arm and shoulder as they walked by. "You are missed," I said, adding, "How does your job now compare to your old job?" He hesitated a moment and said, "When I was in this building, it was like being in the Pentagon. Where I am now is like being in a foxhole." Knowing the city this man helps to run and the kind of answer-defying problems they have to deal with there night and day, I didn't need an explanation.

"People make decisions at the State House, they have to make the tough decisions," I said, "but you have to live with the results of those decisions." "Right," he said, but it was not a mournful acknowledgement. To the contrary, he seemed to exude energy. "You look good! The work agrees with you," I said. "How do you like working for the mayor?" "Oh, I'd walk into a burning building for him," he said. I envied his strength and determination, even as I hoped that the fires awaiting him would be of the manageable variety.

I soon learned that the state is planning to cut funding to the venerable Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program by $2.6 million, from $12.4 to $9.8 million (20%!) in the next fiscal year. WIC provides supplemental food, nutritional education and health care referrals to about 130,000 low-income women, many of whom no doubt reside in the city where the former Senate staffer serves. My guess is his phone was ringing about WIC before he even got back to the front lines of public service...House Budget Tidbit: By the deadline for members of the Massachusetts House to file proposed amendments to the new House budget, (5:00 P.M., Friday, April 15), 758 amendments had been submitted to the House Clerk.

Nobody Will Jump the Gun on Gambling While the House Slogs Through the Budget

2011-04-15T07:39:00.000-07:00

When the Massachusetts House of Representatives convenes on Monday, April 25, to begin formal deliberations on its version of the new state budget, there will be no back-door attempts to inject casino gambling into the debate. That's because the Order Relative to Special Procedures for Consideration of the General Appropriations Bill for the Fiscal Year 2012, the one-page set of rules adopted by the House earlier this week establishing the parameters of these deliberations, contains a stipulation that no amendment to the budget "that pertains to the subjects of casino gaming, slot machines or video gaming shall be in order..."

This was needed because legislators in both branches have often resorted to budget amendments and outside budget sections to try to get things enacted that have nothing to do, per se, with appropriations. The budget has, time and again, proven to be a good short-cut. Determined legislators will take it, if it's available to them. Were it not for the no-gaming rule this budget season, you can be sure at least a couple of reps with strong pro-casino and/or pro-slots credentials would have filed amendments advancing gambling in some fashion, if for no other reason than to show the folks back in their districts they were standing up for the jobs and putative economic benefits that a casino or three would bring.

But any pro-gambling amendment popping up during the April 25-29 work week would have led almost certainly to long, contentious hours of debate and parliamentary maneuvering. It would, once again, "suck all the oxygen out of the room," as legislative leaders lamented when describing last year's futile casino debate.

So everyone basically agreed this week that there will no sparring matches over gambling when the House gets down to the budget. It was no coincidence, however, that the day after Ways and Means unveiled the House budget, the legislature's Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies announced that it would consider all recently filed gambling bills during a hearing on Wednesday, May 4, in Gardner Auditorium, the State House's largest meeting space. This hearing will begin after the House is through with its version of the budget but before the Senate has begun work on its version. Read the announcement on the May 4 hearing as a reassuring message to all who favor casinos that the legislature is serious about grappling with expanded gambling sooner, rather than later, during the 2011-2012 session.

Today's Unveiling of House Budget Will Be Neat, But the Budget Process Is Not for the Squeamish

2011-04-13T06:44:00.001-07:00

The Massachusetts House of Representatives makes public its version of the proposed Fiscal Year 2012 state budget today when the House Ways and Means Committee, led for the first time by Brian Dempsey of Haverhill, brings into the light of day the huge budget document at the State House.

That introduction will be followd by a frenzied two-day period when House members will be allowed to file proposed amendments to the budget. The 160 representatives in the House will file all kinds of budget amendments, not all having to do with money.

In the main, however, reps will be trying to get funds for local projects -- renovations to a senior citizens center, a new sprinklered playing field at a school, new computerized traffic lights at a particularly nasty intersection, etc. There will probably also be some fairly substantive policy issues they'll try to address through budget amendments: increases in funding for tobacco cessation programs, for example, or money for juvenile mental health facilities, or more staffing for a court where the caseload has gone through the roof, etc.

By the deadline for filing budget amendments, which falls at 5:00 p.m. on Friday, April 15, somewhere between 700 and 900 separate amendments will have been filed, if past practice holds. A very high percentage of those amendments will also be dead on arrival, if past practice holds.

By tradition, the Speaker of the House and the Chair of Ways and Means have a reflexive dislike of budget amendments and try to discourage the amending of the Ways and Means version of the budget, even as they realize that members of the House have to seek amendments because of political imperatives they face in their districts. House Leadership (with a capital L) doesn't want the members monkeying too much with the budget, however, and when trying to keep things in line, it presses all members of Leadership, a category that includes all committee chairs, to toe the line.

Then there's the whole issue of state revenue. There is never enough of it, and this year there is even less, as Massachusetts continues to emerge groggily from the economic collapse of 2008. Any budget amendment requirng a substantial expenditure of state dollars beyond what the Ways and Means Committee has already proposed will encounter especially rough treatment this year, which is not the same as saying that no rep will score some funds through a successful amendment. A few always seem to pull it off, quietly.

Another reason the Leadership frowns on budget amendments: it does not want to see the annual budget debate turn into a free-for-all on the House floor, which is what would happen if they provided daylight to members seeking money for pet local projects via amendments. If one member somehow achieved the highly improbable, i.e., got an impromptu floor debate going on an amendment for a project in his district and got it approved by the body, the floodgates would presumably be opened for a bunch of other members who wanted to do the same. They'd be there for weeks, not days, fighting over the budget.

Legislators know they face long, if not impossible, odds this month when trying to bring something to life by amendment, but they try, anyway, because the attempt will look good for the folks back home or because they sincerely believe in the worth and importance of the initiative in question, and would prefer a noble failure to nothing. The biggest thing either branch of the legislature ever does is the state budget for the next fiscal year. Mostly happening behind closed doors, the process that produces that budget is not for the squeamish. To give Leadership its due, the budget would never get done if a cold-hearted discipline were not imposed on the body politic, with the chief disciplinarian being the chair of Ways and Means.

I remember the initial surprise that greeted the announcement by Speaker Sal DiMasi in 2005 that Bob DeLeo would exchange his chairmanship of the Committee on Bills in the Third Reading for the one at Ways and Means. (DeLeo's name had not exactly been on everyone's lips when State House observers were speculating on whom would be tapped by DiMasi to replace John Rogers in the center seat at Ways and Means.) Then it dawned on everyone: Of course, the new Speaker -- DiMasi had just replaced Tom Finneran -- named Bob DeLeo chair of Ways and Means! He was the only close friend of Sal's who could say NO to people. DeLeo had the added virtue of being able to say NO to his peers on budget requests without being unpleasant or heavy-handed, never mind haughty or spiteful. He could tell you where the dog has died, you might say, without giving the impression he was enjoying Fido's funeral. As Speaker, DeLeo will do everything he can to support the NO's that his rookie Ways and Means chair has already built into the budget coming out today.