MA Chief Justice Had to Be Thinking 'Trump!' When He Wrote this Speech

On February 15, Ralph D. Gants, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, visited the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center to deliver what he called “a very brief secular sermon” at the conclusion of the mosque’s midday prayer service.  This was the fourth consecutive year that Justice Gants made such a visit and gave such an address.

“I come each year because it is the clearest way I know how to communicate the continued commitment of the judiciary to protect your constitutional rights, and the rights of every resident in this Commonwealth, citizen and non-citizen, regardless of religion, skin color, or national origin,” Gants said

Passionately, he continued as follows:

“I want to speak to you today about the constitution of a powerful nation -- a constitution that guarantees the rights of all citizens, regardless of nationality or race, in all spheres of economic, cultural, social, and political life; guarantees freedom of religious worship and freedom from anti-religious propaganda; and guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly.

“The constitution I have described is the constitution of the former Soviet Union, established in 1936 under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party. All of you who know your history know that this constitution was a travesty, a litany of empty promises; all of those guarantees meant nothing to a repressive state that routinely violated each of those rights. 

“I speak of the Soviet constitution to prove a point: without an independent judiciary that has the authority and the courage to speak truth to power and to ensure the rule of law, constitutional rights are merely words on paper. The freedoms all of us enjoy that are guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Rights in the Massachusetts Constitution depend on the authority of our judiciary to uphold those freedoms and, when it is necessary, to declare laws and government conduct unconstitutional.

“And they depend on the expectation that those rulings will be obeyed. 

“So, when you hear those in power attempt to intimidate judges in the hope of influencing their decisions, or seek to remove judges for decisions they do not like, or discuss the possibility of ignoring court orders, what is threatened is not only the independence of the judiciary. What is threatened is the rule of law itself, and all of the rights granted by those laws.”

Gants did not identify the person (or persons) he was referring to when speaking of “those in power” who “attempt to intimidate judges…”

Judge-bashing is not an isolated phenomenon these days – think of how the entire West Virginia Supreme Court was recently impeached by a vote of that state’s legislature – but it’s hard for me to imagine anyone other than Donald Trump was uppermost in Gants’s mind at that moment.

This past November, our president, in perhaps his most fearsome attack on the judiciary to date, raged against the federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit -- calling it “a disgrace” -- because the court had dared to order his administration to resume processing claims for asylum from migrants, regardless of how they entered the country. 

Trump complained that the particular judge who authored the ruling, Jon S. Tigar, was “an Obama judge,” eliciting an unusual public reaction from John G. Roberts Jr., Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, shortly thereafter. Roberts put out a statement rebuking Trump and defending Tigar.

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Justice Roberts said.  “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.  That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

Our president, thankful only when circumstances evolve to his personal benefit, gives oath-taking a bad name.  He swore to preserve, protect and defend the constitution.  It has not occurred to him that defending means respecting -- even standing up for – the duly appointed and confirmed experts who interpret that precious document.

To use a favorite Trump word: Sad.

FOOTNOTE: Gants may be a Democrat but any fair observer would be hard-pressed to stick a political label on him.  He was first appointed to the Superior Court by Republican Gov. William Weld in 1997.  Democrat Deval Patrick named him an associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court in 2009, and then promoted him to Chief Justice upon the retirement of Roderick Ireland in 2014.   

House Chaplain's Words Shine a Light on the Righteous Angelina Grimke Weld

The number of women legislators on Beacon Hill is at a record high following the elections of this past November.  Women occupy 46 of the 200 legislative seats (28.5%): 11 in the Senate, 35 in the House.

Until that hoped-for day in a hoped-for-not-too-distant future, when the legislature is evenly divided between men and women, there's no reason to pause long for self-congratulation.  The battle for equality is long and never ending, and almost any look into Massachusetts history reveals a milestone telling us how slowly our society has been moving toward an egalitarian ideal.  Take February 21 as an example. 

On that date in 1838, a woman addressed a legislative body in the U.S. for the first time.  Ever.  This happened sixty-two years after the Declaration of Independence and two hundred and eighteen years after the Pilgrims, refugees from persecution turned persecutors, landed in Plymouth.

The speaker was Angelina Grimke (later to become in marriage Angelina Grimke Weld), an advocate for the abolition of slavery.  She was in the company that day of her sister, Sarah.  Both had been raised on a plantation in South Carolina that operated on the scarred backs of enslaved African Americans.

In revulsion to the horrors they had witnessed, the Grimke sisters converted to the Quaker faith and joined the burgeoning crusade for abolition, which climaxed in the Civil War.  They traversed northern states, giving speeches in which they agitated not only for freeing the slaves but also for total racial and gender equality.  A demand such as this, the National Women's History Museum states, was "highly radical for the times."

The museum also states that lectures by the Grimke sisters about their first-hand knowledge of slavery's evils -- especially to mixed male and female audiences -- "provoked rebuke from ministers for their 'unwomanly behavior.' " 

Women telling hard truths was offensive.  How much have things really changed? 

This past Thursday was February 21.  In honor of the occasion, the Rev. Rick Walsh of Boston's Paulist Center, chaplain of the Massachusetts House, delivered a session-opening prayer that summarized the significance of Angelina Grimke's appearance at the State House and of the words she spoke that day before the Massachusetts Senate. 

"Today we give thanks for a legacy in Massachusetts on the struggle for human rights," Father Walsh said.  "On this day in 1838, a woman addressed a legislative body in the United States for the first time.  Angelina and Sarah Grimke were daughters of South Carolina slave owners who had moved north to pursue their Quaker faith.  In the Massachusetts Senate chamber on Feb. 21, 1838, Angelina Grimke spoke out against slavery, saying it affected American women as a moral, religious and political issue.  We pray today for the women in Massachusetts who serve in ways the Grimke sisters could only dream of." 

I mentioned that Angelinia Grimke married a Weld.  That would be Theodore Dwight Weld, a native of Connecticut who is considered one of the architects of the American abolitionist movement.  Mr. Weld co-authored the book American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, one of the sources used by Harriett Beecher Stowe when writing Uncle Tom's Cabin, the book that Abraham Lincoln said helped bring on the Civil War. 

Wondering if Mr. Weld was related to our former governor, William F. Weld, I did a little research and quickly discovered that he is, indeed, in the governor's family tree, albeit in a branch distant from the governor's. 

In an unforeseen complement to the Civil War aspect of this post, I happened also upon an illustrious Union Army veteran who's much closer on the tree to the governor's family: Stephen Minot Weld, Jr., of Boston (1842-1920).  This Weld left Harvard Law School at war's outbreak to enlist in the army.  Commissioned a second lieutenant, he fought bravely in the Second Battle of Bull Run and in the battles at Antietam and Gettysburg.  By the end of the war, he had achieved the rank of colonel and was commanding the 56th Massachusetts Regiment. Stephen Minot Weld is Governor Weld's first cousin, twice removed.

We're Witnessing in Weld the Genuine Idealist, Long Obscured

According to the latest polls, Donald Trump is viewed favorably by 79% of Republican voters, the simplest indication that former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, who has formed a committee to explore a run for the Republican nomination for president in 2020, does not have a chance of beating Trump in the primaries.  Weld, the opposite of stupid, understands that and will likely challenge Trump anyway.  The question is why.

He could be doing it as a lark, which is what his last campaign, as the Libertarian Party nominee for vice president of the United States in 2016, seemed to be.  (Weld only abandoned Libertarianism officially on January 17 when he re-registered as a Republican.  "I'm rejoining the party not of the Know Nothings," he said, "but rather the party of Lincoln.")

He could be doing it because he's bored and needs the excitement and ego-kick of a Republican presidential nomination battle, where he'd be constantly in the spotlight, trading insults with Trump.  What great copy.

He could be doing it because he's honestly terrified of the damage Trump is doing, and could do, to the country and he believes that he can prevent some of it by standing in Trump's way.  "Our country is in grave peril," he avers.

He could be doing it because his personal brand, which has, in recent years, been anchored to the government relations practice of ML Strategies, the lobbying arm of the Boston law firm of Mintz Levin, needs a refresh.  A multi-state campaign will bring publicity he could never afford.

Or, he could be doing it purely out of a sense of civic duty, as articulated this past Friday morning in a speech before a New Hampshire group convened by the New England Council.  He concluded that speech, an address flowing over with policy details, thusly:

"We cannot sit passively as our precious democracy slips quietly into darkness.  Congress must do its duty, and as citizens we must do ours...in every country, there comes a time when patriotic men and women must stand up and speak out to protect their own individual rights and the overall health of the nation.  In our country, this is such a time.  It is time for all people of goodwill  -- and our country is filled with people of goodwill -- to take a stand and plant a flag.  Abraham Lincoln might have called it the flag of the union.  Today we call it the flag of the United -- yes, United! -- States of America."

Earlier in the speech, Weld, vigorous and sharp at 73, called the president out for his "compulsive irrational behaviors," and, in a line that I, as a former newspaper reporter, particularly liked, he complained that Trump "has virtually spit on the idea that we have a free press."

He also said, "...we have a president whose priorities are skewed toward the promotion of himself rather than toward the good of the country...To compound matters, our president is simply too unstable to carry out the duties of the highest executive office -- which include the specific duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed -- in a competent and professional manner.  He is simply in the wrong place.

"They say the president has captured the Republican Party in Washington.  Sad.  But even sadder is that many Republicans exhibit all the symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome, identifying with their captor."

It's easy to dismiss our former governor as an eccentric -- Who can forget his resigning as governor to pursue the ambassadorship to Mexico? -- or as a gadfly who can dazzle you in one breath propounding upon the analgesic powers of marijuana and on the injustices of the estate tax in the next -- or as a sell-out trading in his senior years on the name he earned in public offices (Watergate committee counsel, U.S. attorney and governor) during his prime.

I don't see Bill Weld as any more divided than any other member of our species.  The weaknesses and strengths, the flaw and virtues, are all there in equal potency.  He's never done anything so bad, so selfish or so greedy that he's lost communication with the better angels of his nature. 

Those angels, I believe, are telling him now that he has a duty to fight, the odds be damned, a man who happens to be  the antithesis of the New England branch of the Republican Party from which Weld sprang. 

That branch is dead and is not coming back to life.  Bill Weld, though he can bloody Trump, cannot beat him. 

As late-in-life exploits go, this is a gallant one.

FOOTNOTE: In the speech announcing his exploratory committee, Governor Weld spoke of the duties we have as citizens.  If you care about politics, I think you have a duty to read the complete text of that not-hard-to-find-online speech.  Just google, "Bill Weld's Feb. 15 speech in New Hampshire."  As I hinted above, Weld, besides laying hard into Trump, lays out numerous, solid policy prescriptions for what ails America.

It's Always Fun to Flip the Pages of the Book on New MA Legislators

On Tuesday, January 2, the 200 members of the Massachusetts legislature -- 40 senators and 160 representatives -- were sworn into office for the 2019-20 session.

The 200 included 5 new senators and 25 new reps, although I'm stretching the word "new" in the case of Senator Barry Finegold of Andover, who was returning to the Senate after a four-year absence. 

You may recall that Finegold gave up this Second Essex and Middlesex District seat to run unsuccessfully in the Democrat primary for state treasurer in 2014, a race won by Deborah Goldberg of Brookline, who was just elected to a second term as treasurer. You have likely forgotten that former Wayland representative Tom Conroy, the ever commendable Tom Conroy, came in third, and last, in that primary.

I should note that Senator Diana DiZoglio of Methuen is also not really new to the legislature.  She has represented her community in the House for the past four years, and before that she was a legislative aide.

The 30 (mostly) new legislators who took their oaths on January 2 are evenly divided by gender: 15 are female and 15 male. It happens that 3 of the 5 new senators are women, while 12 of the 25 new reps are.

This group of 30 reflects the continuing ill fortune of the Massachusetts Republican Party.  Only 3 of them are members of the GOP; all three are in the lower branch:

Rep. Norm Orrall of Lakeville, who succeeded his wife, Kiki Orrall, who had given up the seat to run unsuccessfully for state treasurer; Alyson Sullivan of Abington, who won the seat vacated by Geoff Diehl, who walked away from the legislature to try to oust Senator Elizabeth Warren; and Michael Soter of Bellingham, a sales manager in the food industry, who replaced fellow Republican Kevin Kuros, who ran unsuccessfully for Worcester County register of deeds. 

Aside: Kuros lost the Republican primary for register of deeds to Rep. Kate Campanale, who then lost the final to first-time political candidate Kathryn Toomey, a Democrat, a real estate attorney and a daughter of the late Judge Daniel F. Toomey of the Worcester Superior Court.  Register of deeds pays $129,000 a year, which may explain why two reps were willing to give up their jobs on Beacon Hill to quest for it.  Such plums do not often become attainable but Anthony J. Vigliotti, the incumbent register who had the job for 46 years, made it so by retiring.

I can become fascinated by a close look at any collection of 30 human beings.  And that is especially so when the subset is composed entirely of public servants, those hearty souls who have submitted themselves to the judgment of their peers at the ballot box and been found sufficient.

Thus did I have much fun combing through and ruminating upon the backgrounds of the (mostly) new senators and reps, as compiled by the legislative tracking service we have used for years, MassTrac.

I found, for example, that Barry Finegold and Senator Jo Comerford of Florence, way out in the Berkshires, both graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Comerford is a member of the Franklin and Marshall Class of 1985.  She has worked as a campaign director for Move-On, a progressive public policy advocacy group and political action committee, and as an adjunct professor at Smith College.  (Move-On's big in the campaign to make Senator Warren the next president of the United States.)  Finegold, an attorney with service in both the House (1997-2010) and Senate, graduated from Franklin and Marshall in 1993 (and from the Massachusetts College of Law in 1998).

Franklin and Marshall had never registered on my consciousness, which tells you more about my lack of knowledge than the standing of this institution.  Looking online, I found that Franklin and Marshall is a gem of a liberal arts college that's been around since 1787. It's as old as our country!

Franklin and Marshall alumni include the late Bowie Kuhn, once commissioner of baseball; Ken Duberstein, who was chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan in 1988 and 1989; and actors Roy Scheider of "Jaws" fame and Richard Treat Williams of "Once Upon a Time in America" fame.  (How do you not love a guy named Treat?)

Aside: Richard Treat Williams is descended, on his mother's side, from Robert Treat Paine, a Massachusetts Bay Colony clergyman, lawyer and signatory to the Declaration of Independence.)

Speaking of colleges, I found that Senator DiZoglio (Class of 2010) and two of the new reps, Lindsay Sabadosa of Northampton (Class of 2002) and Liz Miranda of Boston (Class of 2002) are all graduates of Wellesley, and that two other new reps, Maria Robinson of Framingham (Class of 2009) and Nika Elugardo of Boston (Class of 1995), are graduates of MIT.

I even found one Harvard grad in the bunch, Rep. David LeBoeuf of Worcester (Class of 2013), an associate at Urban Business Initiatives. (LeBoeuf replaces former rep Campanale.)

The new legislators include six attorneys: the aforementioned Finegold; Senator Becca Rausch of Needham, a Democrat who defeated a longtime Republican incumbent, Richard Ross, in the Norfolk, Bristol & Middlesex District; Rep. Chris Hendricks of New Bedford, who defeated longtime incumbent Robert Koczera; Rep. Tran Nguyen of Andover, a Democrat who beat one of the most conservative members of the legislature, Republican Jim Lyons; Rep. Dan Carey of Easthampton, who won the 2nd Hampshire District seat vacated by the retiring John Scibak; Rep. David Biele of South Boston, who won the seat left open by Nick Collins when he was elected to the Senate (replacing Linda Dorcena Forry); and Rep. Niki Elugardo of Boston, who defeated incumbent Jeff Sanchez, the House Ways & Means chair, in a major upset.

Aside: Lyons wasn't out of work for long.  In January, he won a contested election for chair of the state Republican Party, where, it is predicted, he will inevitably become a pebble in the sneaker of Governor Charlie Baker, the ultimate centrist.

I found some other, dare I say more interesting occupations in this group.  Rep. Patrick Kearney of Scituate, for example, is a charter fishing boat captain; Rep. Peter Capano of Lynn, is an employee of the big General Electric plant in his hometown and served as president of Local 201 of the IUE/CWA, the union formally known as the International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried Machinists and Furniture Workers/Communication Workers of America; Senator Ed Kennedy of Lowell is a commercial real estate appraiser; and Framingham's Rep Robinson is the director of wholesale markets for Advanced Energy Economy.

There are also three doctors in this group.  Rep. Tommy Vitolo of Brookline has a Ph.D. in systems engineering from Boston University and works as a senior associate at Synapse Energy Economics.  Rep. Jon Santiago is a graduate of the Yale University School of Medicine and is employed as  an emergency room physician at Boston Medical Center.  Rep. Tami Gouveia of Acton earned a Ph.D. in public health at Boston University and is the project director at ReThink Health.  [Note: I am not counting the lawyers with juris doctor degrees in this category.]

Santiago is one of the three in this batch of legislative newbies who has military experience:  he is a captain in the Army Reserve.  The others are Capano, who served in the Army, and Kearney, a graduate of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and Navy veteran.

Two of the new reps have backgrounds as Congressional aides.  Rep. Natalie Blais of Sunderland has served on the staffs of former Massachusetts Congressman John Olver and current Congressman Jim McGovern.  Rep. Mindy Domb of Amherst worked for the late Ted Weiss, who represented a west side Manhattan district in the U.S. House (1977-92).

Not surprisingly, many, many of the new legislators have served or are serving in local government.

Senator Kennedy, for example, was a member of the Lowell City Council before capturing the position formerly held by Lowell City Manager Eileen Donoghue; Rep. Richard Haggerty of Woburn was most recently the president of the Woburn City Council; Rep. Soter was chair of the Bellingham Board of Selectmen; Rep. Carey was an Easthampton city councilor; Rep. Michelle Ciccolo was a member of the Lexington Select Board; and Rep. Orrall served as Lakeville Town Moderator.

I'll wrap up with some of the achievements by these folks that merit inclusion in the category of Interesting Facts About Your Legislators, if such a thing existed:

Rep. David Robertson of Tewksbury is an Eagle Scout; Senator Kennedy is a member of both the Sierra Club and the Appalachian Mountain Club; Rep. Orrall is the owner/operator of Norm's Natural Farm in Lakeville; and Rep. Sabadosa has a master's degree in translation studies from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Blogster's Miscellany: Slow Probe, Elevated Risks, River Like a Sewer, and More

TURTLES ARE THEY. They are either being very careful and painstaking or there’s a hell of a lot to investigate.  Come January, it will be one year since the start of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against former casino magnate Steve Wynn and how his former company, Wynn Resorts, handled those allegations prior to Wynn being granted the Eastern Massachusetts casino license.  Wynn Resorts, which has renamed its casino-under-construction in Everett “Encore Boston Harbor,” could potentially lose its Massachusetts license because of the investigation, but I doubt it will -- and I don’t believe it should, given the tens of millions it has spent on the environmental clean-up and restoration of the casino site on the banks of the Mystic River, where a chemical manufactory once stood.   Without Wynn Resorts the place would have remained a nasty, multi-acre toxic heap in perpetuity.

HOPING HYPOTHETICALS STAY THAT WAY. Recent developments in the stock market have rendered even more unsettling a report this past September from S&P Global Ratings, which placed Massachusetts at “elevated risk” of financial distress during a hypothetical recession.  Under S&P’s “moderate” recession scenario, Massachusetts could expect to experience a 10 percent revenue shortfall and the state’s Stabilization (a.k.a. Rainy Day) Fund could make up for only 62 percent of it.   S&P said only 20 states are well-positioned to weather the next recession, and Massachusetts isn’t one of them.  

GOVERNMENT SHOULDER-SHRUGGING.  If you want to lose your holiday glow really fast, read the Eagle Tribune story of how a couple of commercial buildings apparently dumped thousands of gallons of raw sewage into the Merrimack River for as long as a decade, [“Lawrence buildings disconnected from sewers for years dumped waste into Merrimack River,” 12-2-18].  If you neglect to repair a failure of your car’s emissions control system, you can have your registration suspended, but some people can avoid sanction while allegedly grossly polluting a drinking water source for years.  Years.  Here’s the link:

https://www.eagletribune.com/news/merrimack_valley/lawrence-buildings-disconnected-from-sewers-for-years-dumped-waste-into/article_e5a79a92-388d-56d4-bd6e-140649b02e03.html

GOLDEN AGE OF REALTORS. The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman, reported today that the median sale price for a single-family home in Massachusetts reached an all-time high last month, for a November, of $385,000, up from $368,000 a year earlier.  I like owning a home I could never afford to purchase today until I consider all the young couples out there with $3,000-a-month mortgages, brutally long commutes, and 50-hour-a-week-plus work weeks.

WHO’S LOSING WHAT? Steve Aylward of Watertown, one of 70-plus members of the Republican State Committee, sent a lengthy email to his colleagues yesterday asking them to face the “bitter truth” that the Massachusetts Republican Party “is all but irrelevant.”  It’s a long message.  Towards the end, Aylward, a Boston College grad who describes himself as a manager in the banking and information systems industries, gets to what really seems to be eating at him. “I could go on about our failings, why we lose and how our leadership maintains control in spite of those habitual losses,” he writes. “But while we fiddle, the country burns.  Because if you watch the News with any regularity, you know that we are losing our country.  There will be little left of the country we knew when our children and grand-children come of age.”

SOME PERSONS CAN DO AN AWFUL LOT IN 17 YEARS.  In January, 2002, Katherine Clark became a member of the Melrose School Committee, the first elective office she ever held.  In January, 2019, shortly after she takes the oath of office for the third time as the representative for the 5^th Massachusetts District, Clark, 55, will assume the position of Democratic caucus vice chair, the sixth highest ranking position in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Clark was elected vice chair by her Democrat peers.

LOVES TRUMP, AND DeLEO!  Geoff Diehl, Republican rep from Whitman who went all-in for Donald Trump in 2016 and ever since, gave his farewell speech on the floor of the Massachusetts House on Tuesday, Dec. 4, recalling how he happened to get a seat next to House Speaker Robert DeLeo, D-Winthrop, at an event DeLeo hosted in 2010 for Republican members of the body.  It was “one of the greatest evenings of my life,” said Diehl, who gave up his House seat to challenge U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and is reported to be angling/interviewing for a federal job appointment.  He added, “I will never forget how welcome Bob made me feel and how gracious he has been to members on both sides of the aisle during my time in this chamber.”  As far as his personality and demeanor go, Diehl is the antithesis of Trump.  Never have I understood how he fell for The Donald.

DO I HEAR AN AMEN? The Rev. Rick Walsh, Catholic chaplain of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, is known for his thoughtful, history-based prayers with which he opens the sessions of the lower branch.  Take what he said on Thursday, Oct. 4, for example: “God of justice and righteousness, we pray for the efforts of legislators and staff in crafting laws for Massachusetts as we remember that it was on this day in 1636 when leaders of the Plymouth Colony wrote the first code of laws in America.  They were known as the General Fundamentals.  The legal code included a simple bill of rights that guaranteed trial by jury.  The General Court of Plymouth Colony (the first legislature) levied taxes, decreed the distribution of land, and set out punishments for certain crimes.  Several crimes carried the death penalty, including witchcraft and adultery.  The use of profanity was to be punished by no more than three hours in the stock, and if one travelled, worked or participated in sports on the sabbath, the person would be fined 40 shillings or (given) a whipping.  God of truth, we are grateful for the wisdom of today’s General Court and the greater leniency and morality exhibited in its legislation.  May God continue to bless our Commonwealth.”

What I Would Have Told Those Fresh Faces at Academy for New Legislators

Last week, members-elect of the Massachusetts legislature and legislators who won special elections during the 2017-18 session attended an Academy for New Legislators at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. 

An event designed to prepare them for their new responsibilities and to smooth their transitions to life in the legislature, the Academy included simulated committee hearings on bills, a simulated legislative session, question-and-answer sessions with current legislators, panel discussions on weighty topics (e.g., “the new world of communications”), presentations on the state budget process, the rules of the House and Senate, legislative ethics, and more.  (There were three days to kill here.)

Perusing the Academy web site the other day, I found myself daydreaming about what I would have said to those legislative newbies if, by some massive error or misunderstanding on the part of UMass, I was invited to speak there.

Daydreaming led to jotting ideas on paper.  Before I knew it, I had drafted a series of steps I’d recommend to anyone aspiring to mover-and-shaker status on Beacon Hill.  The working title I scrawled at the top of the page was: What to Do at the State House If You Don’t Want to Be Irrelevant

Here’s the text:

1. Before you take the oath of office, carefully study legislature’s committee structure.
2. Identify a committee or two that offers best chance of ultimately delivering something your district badly needs and/or could benefit from in multiple ways.
3. Upon taking office, establish friendships with alpha dogs in your branch: House Speaker, Senate President, Majority Leaders, Ways & Means Chairs, et al.
4. Do not be shy about expressing your interest in serving on the committee of your dreams.
5. If appointed to said committee, work hard and long at the business at hand.
6. Constantly build and deepen relationships with alpha dogs.
7. Become an expert on issues under your dream committee’s purview.
8. Maximize all networking opportunities so that peers come to recognize your expertise.
9. Get re-elected.
10. During second term, successfully seek vice chairmanship of committee.
11. Pay attention to everything “in the building.” Work hard, work smart.
12. Get re-elected.
13. During third term, secure committee chairmanship if it becomes available. (By virtue of chairmanship, you are now considered a member of leadership.)
14. Over time, strongly define your leadership profile while remaining humble and helpful to all, and especially to Speaker or President.
15. Become trusted, ever dependable insider on small team around Speaker or President.
16. Get re-elected.
17. When time is ripe, when all ducks are lined up, introduce your district’s dream project and start calling in chits to move it forward.
18. Work hard but don’t ever show the strain. 
19. Develop the patience of a sage.
20. Help other leadership members with their priorities at every juncture.
21. Don’t talk too much or issue oodles of press releases.
22. Do everything possible, every little thing, to move dream project over goal lines in both House and Senate, while also cultivating Governor and staff on the side.  (You’ll need him or her to sign your bill or approve your budget item.)
23. Get re-elected. 
24. Repeat process next session.

If the new legislators doubted my formula, I would have encouraged them to do a little research on John D. Keenan of Salem, a Harvard grad and attorney who served in the House (2005-2014) and is now president of Salem State University.  When he entered the legislature, Keenan knew the big coal-fired power plant in his city, a major taxpayer and employer, was coming to the end of its useful life, and would have to be phased out at some time during his expected tenure. 

Keenan then set out to become a member and eventual House chairman of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, a perch from which he engineered a special section of an energy bill that delivered millions of dollars to Salem to compensate it for the loss of the plant and to help the city redevelop the site. 

This was a once-in-a-generation development for Keenan’s community.  He pulled the operation off masterfully with the state senator then responsible for Salem, the late, great Fred Berry of Peabody. 

Shamelessly, I would have recommended to Academy goers that they begin their research at a blog post I wrote in August of 2012.  Here’s a link to that post:

https://pretiminahan.blogspot.com/2012/08/a-house-chairman-and-senate-leader-give.html

So Many Positives with George H.W. Bush. Then There's the War His Son Started.

George H.W. Bush, the 41st President of the United States of America, was born in a home in Milton, Massachusetts, on June 12, 1924, and died yesterday shortly after 10:00 P.M. at his home in Houston, Texas.  In between, he led an incredibly meaningful and eventful life: he was a decorated Navy pilot in World War II, millionaire oilman, congressman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, ambassador to the United Nations, first U.S. envoy to communist China, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Vice President, President, and father of the 43rd President, his namesake, George W. Bush.

Mr. Bush, who was 94 years old when he died, was a patriot in the oldest and deepest sense of the term.  The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor six months before he was to graduate from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and he decided that day he would go off to war as soon he finished high school.  "I could hardly wait to get out of school and enlist," he wrote.  He became the youngest Navy pilot in the war and risked his life in 58 combat missions, flying a one-engine bomber off aircraft carriers in the Pacific.  He was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross.

Mr. Bush was what Massachusetts and other New England States used to be filled with: a Yankee Republican.  This was a breed of conservative, hard-working, understated, public-minded, country-loving patriots whose grandfathers built what used to be called more frequently than it is today "the party of Abraham Lincoln." 

To make his way in the world of politics in his adopted state, he morphed himself into a pork-rind-chewing, horseshoe tossing Texan who bragged about trying to "kick a little ass" in his vice presidential debate with Geraldine Ferraro in 1980 but he was never really convincing or even comfortable in that role.  At heart, he was a polite, considerate, charitable and self-effacing gentleman of means.  No wonder he spent so much time in Maine, his mother's state.  He always fit in better there than in Texas.

Had George H.W. Bush been born in America in the 18th Century rather than in the 20th, it's not hard to imagine him as a delegate to the Continental Congress from Massachusetts -- his ancestors were all over the Bay Colony -- and as an aide-de-camp to George Washington during the Revolutionary War, in which he would have fought valiantly.  That's how true of a true-blue American he was.

Mr. Bush was like our founding fathers in other ways, too, which is to say he was far from perfect -- and not always nearly as courageous in politics as in combat.  He spoke out against the Civil Rights Act when he was trying to get elected to Congress, and later expressed regrets at having done so.

Many years later, when he came out of the Republican convention in 1988 as the nominee for President and was 17 percentage points behind Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis, the Democrat nominee for President, he did not hesitate to adopt the strategy concocted by his handlers to demonize Dukakis as an ultra-liberal, card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union who was uncomfortable making schoolchildren recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.  Mr. Bush also signed onto the racially tinged strategy devised by his campaign manager, Lee Atwater, to fill the airwaves with ads highlighting a Dukakis administration policy that granted weekend furloughs from prison to murderers, one of whom, Willie Horton, who was black, raped a white woman and stabbed her husband while on furlough.

In 1991, when Mr. Atwater was dying of a brain tumor, he made an apology to Mr. Dukakis in the pages of a national magazine.  He said, "...I said that I 'would strip the bark off the little bastard' and 'make Willie Horton his running mate.'  I am sorry for both statements: the first for its naked cruelty, the second because it makes me sound racist, which I am not."  Further, he said, "In part because of our successful manipulation of campaign themes, George Bush won handily," and this, "While I didn't invent negative politics, I am one of its most ardent practitioners."

Naked cruelty.  Manipulation of campaign themes.  Ardent practice of negative politics.

Because he benefited from all of the above, these are all a part of George H.W. Bush's legacy.

Although he was a man of physical courage, personal rectitude and decency, devotion to duty, strong family values, and deep love of country, there will always be one very large reason to regret there ever was a George H.W. Bush presidency, his many positive accomplishments as president, such as how he handled the peaceful demise of the Soviet Union and ended the war to liberate Kuwait early, notwithstanding.  I'm referring to the presidency of George W. Bush. 

Without the first President Bush there never would have been a second President Bush.  Without a second President Bush, there never would have been a misbegotten, needless, seven-year, trillion-dollar war in Iraq (March 2003-December 2011).

As Michael S. Dukakis lamented many a time, "If I hadn't lost to the father, we never would have had the son and that terrible war he started."

In addition to its monumentally stunning cost of $1.06 trillion, entirely financed by deficit spending, the war killed 4,424 Americans and wounded 31,952, many of whom were permanently disabled, blinded and/or maimed for life.  This was the war of bombs planted in roadsides, the improvised explosive devices.

Then there are the hellish costs on the Iraqi side of the ledger.  Close to half a million Iraqis died from war-related causes, according to an academic study published in the fall of 2013.  An article on the study published at that time in the Huffington Post, and updated in December 2017, stated:

"The latest estimate by university researchers in the United States, Canada and Baghdad in cooperation with the Iraqi Ministry of Health covers not only violent deaths but other avoidable deaths linked to the invasion, insurgencies and subsequent social breakdown. 

"It also differs from some previous counts by spanning a longer period of time and by using randomized surveys of households across Iraq to project a nationwide death toll from 2003 to mid-2011. 

"Violence caused most of the deaths, but about a third were indirectly linked to the war, and these deaths have been left out of previous counts, said lead author Amy Hagopian, a public health researcher at the University of Washington.

"Those included situations when a pregnant woman encountered difficult labor but could not leave the house due to fighting, or when a person drank contaminated water, or when a patient could not get treated at a hospital because staff was overwhelmed with war casualties."

There are those who believe that George W. Bush went to war in Iraq to finish the job his father should have when he called an early halt to the war in Kuwait, as our troops were advancing toward Baghdad. It has been said the younger Bush was driven by vengeance against Iraq President Saddam Hussein because Hussein was involved in an unsuccessful plot to assassinate his father after he had left the presidency.  We'll never know if these things are true.

We know for sure, however, that George and Barbara Bush produced a son of such hubris that he readily bought into the wildly ill-founded and absurd-in-retrospect premise of his Vice President, Dick Cheney, to wit, that the Iraqi people would welcome the conquering Americans in 2003 with flowers, and that the U.S. would be able to pay for what they hoped and believed would be a short war with the proceeds from the sale of Iraqi oil.