You Know Budget Season's Started When the Storm of Prepared Statements Erupts

With all the wild shots going off this week, the new budget season in Massachusetts sometimes felt more like hunting season.

Members of the opposing party, advocates for various causes, and all-purpose critics were firing away at Charlie Baker Wednesday, just minutes after he unveiled his budget plan for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

Matt Fenlon, executive director of the state Democratic Party, said, “The key to a budget for Massachusetts voters is how painful cuts made by Republican Gov. Baker will be balanced with maintaining needed services.  Because of key investments made over the past eight years by Gov. Deval Patrick and the Democratic legislature, Massachusetts is No. 1 in education, clean energy and veterans services…Now it’s up to Gov. Baker to work with the Democratic legislature and deliver us a budget that allows Massachusetts to stay a national leader.”

The Massachusetts Teachers Association found the governor’s budget “troubling for its lack of vision and absence of meaningful investments in education and other vital community services.”  

The budget, said the MTA, “is ultimately a proposal that shortchanges students, families and our cities and towns by including cuts to kindergarten expansion programs and providing inadequate funding for our public schools, colleges and universities.”

A group called Raise Up Massachusetts asserted that the governor’s budget “fails to make needed investments” in priorities like “good public schools,” “affordable higher education” and “a transportation system that lets people get to work and customers get to businesses.”

Noah Berger, once a top aide in the Massachusetts Senate and now president of the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, said, “Governor Baker has wisely identified investing in education, transportation and local communities as budget priorities to help working families and strengthen our economy.  This budget does not, however, make significant new investments in those areas.”

Two big reasons for putting out an immediate statement on a  governor’s budget are to signal one’s displeasure to the members of the House and Senate, who will soon be coming up with their own versions of a budget, and to lay the groundwork for a mini-campaign in the legislature aimed at shaping the budget more to one’s liking.

For the parties who pretty much like the governor’s budget as is and who worry about the factors pushing state spending ever higher, budget-roll-out day is also a time to reach out and try to influence a legislator.  They become dervishes of prepared statements as fast as any naysayer.

House Minority Leader Brad Jones noted that “Governor Baker inherited a sizable deficit from the previous administration, but he has risen to the challenge by forging ahead with a creative budget plan and accompanying legislation that seeks to address a myriad of key issues, including ongoing service problems at the MBTA, slowing the growth of Medicaid, and providing much-needed relief to working families by doubling the Earned Income Tax Credit over a three-year period.”

Jones said, “I look forward to working with my colleagues in the House Caucus to ensure that Governor’s Baker’s initiatives are fairly considered as components of the House budget in the weeks and months ahead.”

A group called Building on What Works said it wanted to applaud the governor’s “targeted approach to improve education in Massachusetts through the Partnership Schools Network Fund included in the Administration’s FY 2016 budget request.”

Health Care For All’s executive director, Amy Whitcomb Slemmer, said her group “welcomes” the governor’s budget proposal because it “maintains the Commonwealth’s long-standing commitment to providing access to affordable health care.”  She was “particularly pleased that the budget extends this year’s decision to restore MassHealth (Medicaid) coverage for full dentures.” 

The Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance said, “Governor Baker’s FY ’16 budget represents a welcome and continued break from our state’s recent economic policies, particularly since it does not seek to raise taxes.”

I always nod admiringly at statements that are careful not to rough up the governor, because where does that get you, while inviting the legislature to correct the governor.  Take the words of Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants, for example: 

“Although we recognize the financial constraints facing the Governor and the very difficult choices reflected in this budget proposal, we are deeply disappointed with the funding allocated to the Judicial Branch…We look forward to working collaboratively with the Governor and the Legislature to ensure that the Judiciary is funded at a level that ensures that justice is effectively delivered, and that basic criminal justice and public safety needs are met.”

Suffolk County Sheriff Steven W. Thompkins called Baker’s new budget “an encouraging start” and, in the next sentence, expressed concern “for programs that target the root causes of incarceration” because he thinks the governor has shortchanged those programs.

As the budget process continues, Thompkins said, he is looking forward “to working with the Suffolk County delegation in the Legislature to make sure that the corrections community has a voice in this important discussion about Massachusetts priorities.”

In the sheriff’s world, folks don’t scream bloody murder about budget items, they just hold a lot of important discussions. 

The best immediate statement on the Baker budget, in my opinion, came from Senate President Stan Rosenberg.  No coincidence, it was also the shortest statement I saw.

“The Senate is committed to making government work more effectively and more efficiently for working families across the Commonwealth.  As we study the Governor’s budget proposal, we will be looking for clear cut evidence that this budget is intended to fulfill these same objectives,” the President’s statement said.

It was respectful of the governor, but not fawning.  It enunciated a goal no one can quarrel with, a government that works better for working families, but committed the Senate to no specific course of action or to a certain programmatic agenda.  It pointed to what the budget process is fundamentally about: evaluating a mountain of facts and making countless hard decisions.  All that in 44 words.

An honorable mention goes to the sum-up line from the top lobbyist for the Associated Industries of Massachusetts, the estimable John Regan.  “The governor’s proposed budget takes constructive steps toward ensuring that the Commonwealth lives within its means,” he said.

Leave it to those persnickety business types to bring up limits when we’re talking about spending public dollars.  Party pooper.

 

If Birmingham Had Won 2002 Nomination, Romney's Life Might Have Changed Big Time

Tom Birmingham made the news this week when the word got around that he’s joining the Pioneer Institute as a senior fellow in education.

Birmingham, a former president of the Massachusetts Senate, is a lifelong Democrat, and the Pioneer Institute is traditionally a haven for Republicans, so the story was shot through with the cliché of the “strange bedfellows.”

I was not much surprised by the news.  Birmingham’s mind is extraordinarily capacious and subtle.

“It was clear to me that we have a substantial area of common ground on education issues that does not extend to a variety of other issues where we have to agree to disagree,” Birmingham said of his relationship with the institute in an interview with the State House News Service.   

If Birmingham thought he could do something to elevate the quality of public education in Massachusetts even a tiny notch or two by joining the conservative scrum at the Pioneer Institute, he would not have dithered over the offer.

The Pioneer Institute’s newest recruit is a decisive fellow, indeed.  Otherwise, he never would have ended his Senate career at its apogee in 2002 to try to gain the Commonwealth’s highest office. 

It is worth considering that, if Birmingham’s gubernatorial quest had succeeded, Mitt Romney’s two presidential campaigns would not have happened, and the recent history of presidential politics would be quite different from what it is.

Starting in 1990, Birmingham was in the Senate for 12 years.  Kind of remarkably for modern times, he was president of the Senate for half of the time he served there.

No doubt, Birmingham learned a great deal about legislating from his patron and predecessor, Bill Bulger, but he obviously ignored the lesson on longevity.  Bulger’s presidency lasted for 17 years.

For Birmingham in 2002, it was up or out.  This is a philosophy more should adhere to.  The courage of it becomes a man.

In 2002, Birmingham was one of five Democrats who sought the nomination for governor.  The others were State Treasurer Shannon O’Brien; Robert Reich, an academic and former U.S. Labor Secretary; State Senator Warren Tolman; and Steve Grossman, a businessman and a former chair of the national Democratic Party, (and, until early last month, our state treasurer).

Birmingham came in third in the primary, fewer than 6,000 votes behind second-place finisher Reich, and far behind the winner, O’Brien.  If Reich had not been in the race, I believe Birmingham could have taken the nomination from O’Brien. 

Reich was the darling of the liberals that year.  Had he not been in the race, most of Reich’s votes would have gone to the next most liberal person in the race, Birmingham.  Reich’s vote total, 185,315, added to Birmingham’s, 179,703, would have produced 365,018 votes, a number far beyond O’Brien’s, 243,039.

O’Brien was a good candidate but ultimately did not match up well against Romney.  She had a big early lead in the polls and faded at the end, losing by nearly five percentage points.

Birmingham certainly would have had a tough time with Romney, who looked on the surface more like a governor than he.  And Romney would have bloodied Birmingham on account of his status as a protégé of Bulger and a State House insider.

Yet Birmingham would have prevailed, in my opinion, because (a) he’s Chelsea tough and can take a punch, (b)  he is every bit as smart as Romney, if not smarter, (c) he is much more knowledgeable about politicking and governing than Romney, (d) he has the gift of being able to explain on the stump why a principles-driven, activist government is better for the average person  -- Birmingham’s scarily articulate when worked up -- and  --most important -- (e) Birmingham’s genuine passion for action and leadership would have formed an appealing contrast to Romney’s cool, superior, master-of-management style.      

Romney wasn’t governor two years when it became obvious he was mainly interested in the job because it could be a stepping stone to the presidency.  There’s nothing terribly wrong or unusual with that.  If wild ambition were a hanging offense, we’d have to install a permanent gallows on the grounds of every state capitol.

This may qualify as a stupendous delusion, but I’ll always believe that the candidacy of Robert Reich, a liberal’s liberal, opened the floodgates for the national ambitions of Mitt Romney, who presented himself expediently as a “severe conservative” when he was actually a severe moderate, an act of contortion that likely spelled the death of his oval office dream.  

The Pioneer Institute describes itself as an “independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization.”  It says that its mission is “to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous, data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government.”

Birmingham will be good for the Pioneer Institute, and vice versa. 

 

 

 

 

Can't Take Excitement, Post-Snowpocalypse? Don't Dare Read a Blogster's Miscellany

YOU SAVE MONEY ON T BUT LOSE YOUR MIND:  Last August, the American Public Transportation Association issued a press release saying the average Bostonian who used public transportation to get to work, rather than operating a car for that purpose, saved $1,087 per month and $13,045 per year.  Given the recent nonfeasance of the MBTA, the average Bostonian can be forgiven if she says, “Please, Lord, let me stop saving money this way!”

IF YOU HAVE TO ASK HOW MUCH OLYMPICS COST, YOU CAN'T AFFORD IT: The Boston Globe reports that organizers of Boston’s 2024 Olympics bid “are wooing wealthy business executives to join an elite group of private financial donors known as the ‘Founders 100’ ” and that getting into the group will cost an individual at least $50,000 and a company at least $100,000, (“Olympics group calls on wealthy executives,” 1-23-15).  Some experts on philanthropy in the Hub subsequently opined that fundraising for a putative Olympics would not have an adverse impact on giving to other, more established worthy causes. Apparently, these prospective donors are so well off that they have multiple checks of the $50,000 variety to toss around. Not one of them ever says to the president of small non-profit who comes knocking on his door, “Sorry, I’m all tapped out for this year.”  Sure.

EXAGGERATE IF YOU WANT TO RESONATE: Who knew you can’t believe someone who sends you an email looking for a donation?  A recent Harvard faculty working paper (whatever that is) found that fundraising appeals from political candidates were more effective when they told recipients they were behind in the polls.  A news release on the working paper provided this example of a “message that resonated” with prospective donors: “BREAKING: A new SurveyUSA Poll has Democrats LOSING to Rick Scott in Florida, 41-42!!!  Now is the moment to DETHRONE the king of voter suppression and his allies in key battlegrounds.”  The authors of the working paper said, “Emails emphasizing that the preferred candidate was barely losing raised 60 percent more money than emails emphasizing that he was barely winning.”

NO ONE WILL EVER LOVE YOU, AMERICA, LIKE RUDY: Do you recall how, in 2002, when Mitt Romney was running for governor, his handlers brought in former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to put a shine on the campaign, and how Giuliani had just the right touch with the man (and the woman) on the street, semi- famously responding to a North Ender who offered to buy him and Mitt a cannoli by wrapping his arm around the guy and saying, “No, let me buy you a cannoli,” while Mitt stood awkwardly by, seemingly anxious about messing up the campaign schedule?  Now “America’s Mayor” has become the pol with the opposite of touch: he infamously told a dinner gathering in Wisconsin last week, “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America.  He doesn’t love you.  And he doesn’t love me.  He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.” No doubt those words sent a jolt of excitement through every Democratic operative in the land.  Obama will be sending Rudy a love letter every week if he keeps talking like that.

NEVER MIND THE AQUIFER, WHAT ABOUT HIS LUNGS?  Speaking of the Globe, did you happen to see the story last month about the folks on Cape Cod who are up in arms about NStar using herbicides to kill vegetation below its power lines, (“Cape residents protest NStar’s use of herbicides,” 1-20-15)?  The director of Protect Our Cape Cod Aquifer was quoted as saying, “NStar’s cocktail of herbicides, with their unknown long-term side effects, has no place on Cape Cod with its fragile environment.”  The story was accompanied by a photo of a worker spraying herbicides from a big device strapped to his back.  He wasn’t wearing a mask or any protective clothing that I could see.  I surmised that (a) the worker was a person of at least normal intelligence, and (b) the “cocktail” he was lugging around can’t be all that toxic if he’s willing to breathe in its particles all the live-long day.

OUR VALUES NOT STRENGTHENED BY ANONYMITY:  Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Associate Justice Robert Cordy was right: Being a citizen means there are times when you have to stand up and be counted.  Formerly Governor William Weld’s general counsel, Cordy authored the opinion for the majority in a case decided in favor of the Boston Globe, which had sued to obtain the names of jurors in a murder trial.  Access to information about jurors, he wrote, “promotes confidence in the judicial system by, among other things, providing an independent nongovernmental verification of the impartiality of the jury process, and educating the public as to their duties and obligations should they be called for jury service.”  Chief Justice Ralph Gants dissented.  “We have had few instances in this Commonwealth where jurors have been threatened or harassed after their verdict, but many jurors fear the possibility, especially where they reside in or near the communities of the litigants or the litigants’ families,” wrote Gants.  “I also fear that the creation of a juror list to be included in the case file may, over time, diminish the fairness and impartiality of jurors.”  We ask young men and women to risk their lives in the defense of our nation and its values.   Is our state asking too much if it publishes our names should we be called to serve in relation to the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution?

FIVE YEARS LATER, A SLAP STILL STINGS: In a guest column in CommonWealth magazine, former Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation Jim Aloisi pulled the curtain back on a sharp disagreement he had with the Senate chairman of the legislature’s Joint Committee on Transportation in 2009, (“Aloisi’s fixes for the T: Get rid of MassDOT board, 2-11-15”).  “The MassDOT board is a vestige of a political battle, not of thoughtful public policy,” Aloisi wrote.  “The 2009 Transportation Reform bill that I filed with the legislature did not include a MassDOT board – that was an invention of the Senate, and its former transportation chair, Steven Baddour of Methuen.  He and I were feuding about my opposition to his ‘reform before revenue’ approach to the bill, an approach that I feared (rightly) would lead to reform without much meaningful net new revenue.  Creating the board was meant as a slap to me; its entire rationale for being was a way to reduce my power as secretary.  Even after I received assurances from both the then House and Senate chairs that the secretary would be on the board as an ex-officio member, that did not happen.  The change in the law placing the secretary on the board took place several years later, after it became clear that the construct enacted into law in 2009 freezing out the secretary was untenable.”  The art of governing is only made better when a public servant, or a former public servant, tells us candidly  what happened when an important piece of legislation was created -- or rather, his version of what happened.  I hope Steve Baddour will now avail himself of the CommonWealth franchise to share his version -- or to slap back, as the case may be. 

 

 

Revere Does Not Have to Sit Still for Being a Cog in the Olympic Dream Machine

Right now, after enduring weeks of cruel and unusual punishment on the rolling gulag that is the MBTA, I kind of like the idea of Boston hosting the Olympics.  It might be the only reason we’ll ever fix the T.

On the other hand, I will with any luck be retired by the time the Olympics rolls around in 2024. By then, my concerns about wait times at Oak Grove Station should be strictly academic. 

Also, how can I embrace the idea of a Boston Olympics as long as the Games seem to be at odds with the best interests of the City of Revere, where I was raised and where my heart lies?

The Boston 2024 Committee is eyeing Suffolk Downs as a back-up site for the Olympic Stadium if its first choice, some land off the expressway in South Boston, falls through. 

I guess that means the folks in Revere who are hoping to turn the no-longer-necessary racetrack into something new and exciting, something that capitalizes on the site’s proximity to the Blue Line and Revere Beach, something welcoming and good for hard-working families, something that permanently widens the tax base, will have to put their hopes on indefinite hold.  Or maybe not.

If you’re Revere Mayor Dan Rizzo, you are probably not going to allow one of your city’s biggest potential assets to lie fallow because persons who will never live and vote in Revere might need it to realize their dreams of international glory.

Mayor Rizzo at least has to consider the possibility of scoring political points at the expense of outsiders who presume to decide the best way to use some prime real estate in his city.

It would be easy for Mayor Rizzo to convene a news conference and announce that (a) the city is working closely with the owners of Suffolk Downs to come up with the smartest and most productive new uses for the site, (b) it is impossible to determine at this time if an Olympic Stadium would be either smart or productive, and (c) you are recommending that the owners of Suffolk Downs avoid any agreement with Boston 2024 until all viable proposals are carefully considered and compared to one another.   He might want to throw in a comment to the effect of: “The chairman of the Boston 2024 Committee is welcome to call our City Planner at any time.”

Meanwhile in East Boston, a group of activists has promulgated a “vision statement” for their community that addresses the redevelopment of Suffolk Downs, a good portion of which lies in East Boston.

The statement, entitled “Overarching Principles for Development in East Boston,” is the work of East Boston 2020, a group mainly composed of elements that defeated a pro-Suffolk Downs casino referendum in November, 2013.  It contains “five principles by which all future significant development proposals in East Boston – and Suffolk Downs in particular – should be measured.”  Those principles are: permanent job creation, community inclusion and a transparent process, environmental impact, transit-oriented development, and economic feasibility.

East Boston 2020 is fortunate to have at its disposal the energy and intellectual firepower of Attorney Jim Aloisi, an East Boston native and a former Secretary of Transportation in the Governor Patrick administration.  He was quoted in a recent press release from the group, (“Olympic Stadium at Suffolk Downs? Any Plan for the Site Must Meet Community Principles, Approval,” 2/2/15), as follows:

“Although Suffolk Downs is privately owned, it is supported by a highway and transit system owned and operated by the state and paid for by the taxpayers of Massachusetts.  It is only fair and just that any major development on its grounds be thoroughly vetted by local citizenry and surrounding communities.  We hope these principles, which express a positive and forward-looking vision for the future of this site and community, will be embraced by a broad spectrum of state and local decision makers.  Ours is a constructive vision, and we are eager to engage with those who appreciate the potential for this site to bring transformative change to the community, the city and the region.”

Long before the great athletes of all nations parade into an Olympic stadium in Massachusetts, average citizens will troop into meeting after meeting to “thoroughly vet” the sites proposed for the various Olympic events.  That will be as it should be. 

Greece gave the world both the Olympics and democracy.  Of those two wonderful ideas, it’s not hard to say which is the most important.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Losing Campaign for an Office that Gets No Respect Need Not Be a Ticket to Oblivion

He was on the statewide ballot less than three months ago and already most voters have forgotten him.  He could remain forever in obscurity or emerge again in a flash to seek high office.  You can’t count him totally out.

I’m talking of course about Stephen Kerrigan of Lancaster, the most recent Democratic nominee for Lieutenant Governor.

There’s an old saying in politics: “When you’re out, you’re out.”  It’s meant to convey how much your life changes when you lose an election. For example:

On Monday, Nov. 3, Kerrigan was a young (43), rising star on the political horizon. Everywhere he went that day, people flattered him and laughed a little hard at his jokes for the simple reason he might be at the right hand of the next Governor.

On Wednesday, Nov. 5, he was the guy from the sticks that scraped and hustled all his life to get to the big show and had the bad luck, when he got there, to be paired with Martha Coakley. People told him a little too insistently what a great race he’d run, then said to themselves “Poor Steve” as they walked away.

Kerrigan was out.  Finished.  Forgettable. Gone.

Ditto for Martha Coakley. 

Politics is a brutal business; losing hurts badly for a long time.

Coakley and Kerrigan lost to Charlie Baker and Karyn Polito by 40,165 votes on Tuesday, Nov. 4.  If they’d managed to flip 20,083 of those votes, they’d have won.

The total number of votes in the governor election was 2,158,326, including write-ins and votes for independent and third-party candidates. One percent of that total is 21,583.

Less than 1% of the participating voters denied Coakley/Kerrigan the opportunity to govern the Commonwealth.   

The duo did very well, just not well enough.  Their defeat, nevertheless, was sufficient to end the political career of Coakley at age 61.  Due to her previous loss to Scott Brown in the special U.S. Senate election of 2010, she’s like one of those talented fighters who has lost two heavyweight championship bouts in a row.

People love you and all, but no one wants to promote your next match.

Kerrigan falls somewhere else:  he’s in the glimmer-of-hope category.

You can argue that Kerrigan has a future in politics on account of his strong showing in the September Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, where he collected just over 50% of the votes (222,562) in a three-man field.  He bested Leland Cheung, 29.3% (128,645), and Michael Lake, 19.6% (86,006).  Your argument is bolstered by Kerrigan’s 10 years on the staff of the late Ted Kennedy and his national Democratic Party credentials: he was chief of staff for Obama’s first presidential inaugural committee, and president/CEO of the committee running Obama’s second inaugural.

Those who doubt that Kerrigan has political prospects note that the only elections he has won have been for the Lancaster Board of Selectmen.  They point out that he failed miserably when trying to get elected to the House of Representatives in 2008.  Also, he has no base, they cry.  Kerrigan is from a small town in a thinly populated part of the state; he’s not a mayor, a legislator, a county official or  even a regional school committeeman.

Back to the boxing analogy. 

If Kerrigan were a boxer and you were his manager, here’s what you might be telling him now, re: making the right move at the right time:

You did great in your first major contest: 50% of the vote in a three-man election was awesome.  It showed that you can connect with all kinds of people and win their support.  Now, you could run for governor in 2018; in some respects, you’re the Democratic heir apparent, the future of the party.  But if you didn’t get the nomination, your time in statewide politics would be over, and if you won the nomination but lost the final election, your time in statewide politics would be over.  I recommend a race for sheriff or state senator, something where there’s a high probability of success.  Do well in a job like that for four or six years, and you’d be set to run statewide again, say for treasurer, auditor or secretary of state.  From there, it’s a short leap to governor.  You could be running everything in Massachusetts by the time you’re in your early-fifties!

 

 

All Hail that Unique Incubator of Politicians: Your Humble Local Funeral Home

I’m surprised more funeral directors don’t run for the legislature.  It seems like a perfect meshing of private and public occupations.

Many funeral directors are well suited and well situated for the life of a public office holder.  They have endless, albeit sad, opportunities to forge strong relationships with local families. They get to greet hundreds of their townsmen on a typical night “working the door.” They have no fixed work schedules, meaning they can dash off in the middle of the day for, say, a social at the senior center or a meeting of the Kiwanis.  And they often find themselves with big chunks of downtime, which are ideal for doing favors, making phone calls, schmoozing at the coffee shop, or coaching youth sports teams.

Young Joseph Ruggiero of the Ruggiero Family Memorial Home in East Boston obviously believes this is a recipe for success.  He’s running for the state rep seat vacated by Carlo Basile when Carlo became chief secretary to our new Governor, Charlie Baker.

In this race, Ruggiero has the zesty support of Boston Mayor Marty Walsh.  “He worked morning, noon and night for my campaign (in 2013),” Walsh told the State House News Service last week when proclaiming his endorsement of Ruggiero.  “I’m a loyal person and I also know he’d make a great state representative.”

Walsh carried East Boston by 66 votes, so the mayor has to be thinking, without Joe, I might have bought the farm over there. Do not be surprised if the rep election is similarly close.  There are four other Democrats besides Ruggiero in the race, two of whom have strong ties to East Boston legislators.  Another candidate has worked for the E.B. city councilor.

It’s a time-honored American tradition, especially in our cities:  funeral directors use their businesses as springboards to public office, while office holders use funeral homes to keep their political stock high. 

That phenomenon was nicely illustrated in an obituary published January 9 in the Chicago Sun-Times and picked up by other news outlets around the country: “Celene Siedlecki, Ran One of Chicago’s Oldest Funeral Homes.”  The late Mrs. Siedlecki was in the third generation of the family that continues to run Thomas McInerney’s Sons Funeral Home, founded in 1873. 

“The family funeral home was so well-known,” the obituary noted, “that Mike Royko singled it out in ‘Boss,’ his biography of Mayor Richard J. Daley, when he wrote of the mayor’s devotion to evening wakes, ‘part of political courtesy and his culture.’ “

Mrs. Siedlecki’s son, Charles, was quoted as saying, “It was very common to see Mayor Daley here, the first Mayor Daley.  He would never miss a wake.  He would buzz in with his entourage and bodyguards, and he wouldn’t stay long, but he never missed a wake.”

You should look up this tribute to Mrs. Siedlecki, and to McInerney’s, not least for the pleasure of reading the poem in it that begins, “Bring out the lace curtains and call McInerney; I’m nearing the end of my life’s pleasant journey.” It may be found at:  http://chicago.suntimes.com/obituaries-obituaries/7771/279818/xsiedlecki

One funeral director who was dear to me, the late Joseph A. Curnane of Everett, was active in politics his entire life, serving for years on the local school committee, as well as on the housing authority.  (As the publisher of the Everett Leader Herald and News Gazette, he was also known to practice an occasionally lethal form of political journalism.)  

Curnane possessed a political mind of extraordinary breadth and sharpness, a fact recognized by no less an authority than John F. Kennedy, who had him manage his 1960 presidential campaign in Maryland.  This entailed uniting the warring Democratic factions in Baltimore, a nearly impossible task for a carpetbagger from Massachusetts. (Curnane succeeded; Kennedy carried Maryland.)

Once, when he was reminiscing with me about his years with JFK, Curnane smiled and recounted the time he was in a gathering of Kennedy hands and someone mentioned that more than a few of them had gone to Harvard.

“Not me,” Curnane piped up.

“Why, where did you go, Joe?” someone asked.

“New England Institute of Embalming,” he answered.  Everyone had a good laugh, of course.

There’s no formal schooling that could have produced or diminished my father-in-law’s genius-level political IQ -- although funeral home downtime undoubtedly played a part in the flourishing of that gift.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bulger's Old Antagonist, Accused of Wrongdoing in Civil Suit, Seizes the Initiative

When Alan Dershowitz, emeritus professor of law at Harvard, was accused in a recent civil action of having had sexual relations with a teenage girl, my first thought was, what does Bill Bulger think of this? 

Does Bulger wish he was still in office, I wondered, so that he could make some sly and cutting references to the accusation from the rostrum of the Massachusetts Senate, or has he mellowed in retirement to the point where he could not care less about the trouble besieging his one-time bitter adversary?

Most of us will never learn the answers to those questions because Bulger, who served as Senate President for 18 years, is unlikely to issue a statement on the matter or ring up a reporter to chat about it.    

If you need a reminder of the bad blood that existed – and probably still exists -- between Dershowitz and Bulger, consider the following excerpt from a blog post by the professor, which appeared on the web site of Boston magazine on July 8, 2011 under the headline, “Dershowitz: With Bulger Brothers, the Cover-Up Continues”:

“When Billy was the most powerful political figure in Boston, corruption permeated every aspect of public life, from the FBI, to federal prosecutors, to the state judiciary, to Beacon Hill, to building inspectors, to the State Police.  Everyone – from governors, to justices of the state’s highest court – kowtowed to ‘The President,’ which in Boston meant Billy Bulger.”

Somehow I missed most of that crime wave.  Perhaps it’s time the feds investigated Bulger’s role in the rise of Al Qaeda and the decline of the glaciers?

Well, you don’t have to love that unique Dershowitz style or agree with everything that comes out of his mouth to appreciate his spirited response to the allegation he’d taken indecent liberties with a minor.

That claim was made in a motion filed last week in a civil case in Florida involving new allegations against Jeffrey E. Epstein, a New York money manager who, according to the New York Times, pleaded guilty several years ago to soliciting prostitution.  Dershowitz once served on Epstein’s legal team.

The motion, part of a civil case brought against Epstein, claimed that Epstein had ordered an underage woman in his retinue to have sex with several men, including Prince Andrew of England and Dershowitz.

Buckingham Palace issued a prompt denial on behalf of the Prince. And Dershowitz denied it with equal swiftness in direct conversations with reporters, while adding an extra twist, something I’d never seen before in situations like this: he declared his intention to go after the lawyers who filed the motion.

“They are lying deliberately, and I will not stop until they’re disbarred,” Dershowitz said in a phone interview with the New York Times.

It was his intention, Dershowitz told the Times on January 2, to initiate disbarment proceedings the following week against the lawyers who filed the motion, Bradley J. Edwards, who practices in Florida, and Paul G. Cassell, a former federal judge and a law professor at the University of Utah.

Lawyers are supposed to have reasonable grounds to believe something is true before they put it in a lawsuit.  They don’t have to know for sure it’s true, but they have to have formed a professional judgment it could have happened the way their client and/or witnesses say it did.   

In pursuing the disbarment of Edwards and Cassell, Dershowitz would likely want to have the pair deposed, so they’d have to answer questions under oath on how they came to the conclusion that Dershowitz had had sex with the underage woman. 

On Tuesday, there was a new wrinkle in the case: Edwards and Cassell filed a defamation suit against Dershowitz in a Florida state court, claiming he had damaged their reputations by accusing them of “intentionally lying in their filing (of the motion).” Dershowitz, they complained, had “initiated a massive public media assault” on their reputations and characters.

Edwards and Cassell accuse Dershowitz of taking sexual advantage of a teenager – basically of being a sleazebag -- and they’re outraged when he, in turn, accuses them of lying.  That’s kind of rich, to say the least.

It’s easy to rip someone’s face off in the initial document that launches a civil lawsuit. Plaintiffs’ attorneys tend to paint the worst possible picture of a defendant at the outset, presumably to instill in that person: (a) a fear of how bad the case could get if it ever goes to trial, and (b) a desire to consider an early out-of-court settlement.

And when a lawsuit hits the newspapers, defendants usually clam up.  They say “no comment” to the newshounds who knock on their doors, they make themselves “unavailable” for any comment at all, or they let their lawyers speak for them, but all the lawyers say is, “I’ve advised my client not to speak on these matters because they are now before a court of law,” adding, primly, “We’re not going to try this case in the press.”

That’s what made Dershowitz’s response so refreshing.  Not only did he personally come forth to deny unequivocally any wrongdoing, he also called out the lawyers for the other side.  He stood before the world and told his tormentors, I’m coming for your law tickets, boys.  I’m shutting you down!

I probably would not count myself among the fans of Dershowitz.  He’s too scorched-earth-all-the-time for me. But I like the way he has jumped fearlessly into this game of Career Russian Roulette.  Yesterday, he was quoted in the Boston Globe as saying, “In the end, someone will be disbarred.  Either it will be me or the two lawyers.  In the end, someone’s reputation is going to be destroyed: either mine or theirs…I’m thrilled they sued me.”