Monday, March 19, 2007

Monday Morning Catchup

I've been way behind posting on current events, and I have to admit that I haven't really spent any significant time watching the news or reading the paper in the past three weeks. There are a couple of things, though, I would like to comment on before I forget about them.

  • It looks like Senate President Robert Travaglini has one foot out the door already. If he wasn't looking for a way out, these stories wouldn't be written. It's astounding to me that in Massachusetts, someone can be senate president one day and a high-powered lobbyist the next. Sure, he's barred from lobbying the House and Senate for a year, but everyone else in state government is fair game. The other thing I noticed was that almost every single one of these "Trav is about to leave" articles mentions how he has to put three kids through college on "only" $90,000 a year. I understand the sentiment, but Travaglini is not the first person in the world to have to put his kids through college, and most people in Massachusetts have a lot less than $90,000 annually to do so.
  • The special election for state Rep is tomorrow in the 14th Worcester district (part of Worcester and all of West Boylston). Good luck to candidate Jim O'Day, who was kind enough to chat with me last month.
  • In what universe is Politician Sends Email to Supporters a front page news story? I get so many messages from campaigns that I have a separate account for it. I'm becoming convinced that Andrea Estes is not a human being, but a machine that converts dropped dimes into front page articles. Andrea, just because someone sends you an email does not mean that you are obligated to print their story.
  • Here at home, the Watertown Tab announced that former School Committee member Steve Aylward is running again for town council in District C. The Tab describes his tenure on the committee as "frequently combative" and marked by "battles with more liberal members." That's perfect, because if there's one thing that the Watertown Town Council needs, it's more battles.
  • I'd also like to point out that my Mac iBook handled the early daylight savings changeover perfectly, while my machine at work, and our Windows laptop (which I just updated the system software for shortly before the time change) are still an hour behind.
I hope whatever readers I still have managed to enjoy the interviews from last week. I have a couple more planned for this week, and I think that I'll be doing more of those in the future.